


for all the honest world to feel

by daremebyday



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: Hurt/Comfort, Long-Distance Relationship, M/M, Mutual Pining, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-07-11
Updated: 2018-02-12
Packaged: 2018-11-30 17:05:07
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 59,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11467899
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/daremebyday/pseuds/daremebyday
Summary: “I didn’t want to lie to you too,” Brian said. “I don’t do that and I’m not gonna start. But I need to get – out. Away. I don’t know.”He sighed and rubbed at his forehead.There was a strange sound from the other end of the line, like something – maybe the phone itself – was being fumbled by a body in motion. “Trixie, are you okay?” Katya said, and then, in the same breath, “Can I come over? I want to come over. I think maybe I should come over.”





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> i wasn't planning on putting this on ao3 because it always fucks with my italics and i'm too goddamn lazy, but it keeps coming up in conversation as something i should do so here i am, doing it ✌️
> 
> i like to describe this fic as "unmitigated sadness broken up by a few bad jokes" but i absolutely 50000% promise there'll be a happy ending. i started writing this in may; the first four chapters are done and i'll post them immediately, and the fifth should be along within the week, work allowing. standard disclaimer: no warnings apply and none of this is real! this fic is canon set sometime this upcoming august; i use “katya” and “brian” for clarity and he/him pronouns out of drag for both. not established relationship, but established something. 
> 
> buckle up for like..... probably 40-50k words of feelings about idiots, love, breaking points, self-care, communication, and - most importantly - puns.

There was an email drafted on the laptop in front of him. It had been staring him in the face for the past half hour, unsent; for the past five minutes, he’d had his phone out, his thumb hovering over the call button.

“Fuck,” Brian said, quietly. Then louder: “Fuck _this_.”

He hit call.

The call rang through; he lifted a hand behind his head to adjust the brim of his cap, the band slipping on his forehead. It was bright outside the windows, the light slipping through the blinds and landing golden on the desk. A California-typical day, just like the day before, on the pier, with seagulls white against the stretching blue sky, sand crunching on the dock under his sandals, and _Katya_ –

There was that not-sound, like a change in the air pressure on a plane, and then Katya’s voice was bright in his ear.

“Tracy!” That was how Katya always answered the phone – announcing the caller’s name, like they might have forgotten what it was. He’d told Brian once that he thought it said that not only did he know _exactly_ who they were, but that he was abso-fucking-lutely _delighted_ to hear from them.

Brian, on the other hand, liked to start a phone conversation with a stone-faced ‘you have five minutes.’ Really set the mood right off the bat.

“I was just about to call you,” Katya continued, characteristically exuberant. “I don’t know if you’re free but if you are, I have feet that were made for walkin’, boots that were made for knockin’, and a hike that leads to a view that I’m pretty sure you’re gonna fall in love with. Which I can say, because I am a psychic.”

“That’s an interesting take on a timeless classic, sure,” Brian said, then shook his head and swallowed. “Listen. I’m actually – I have an email open in front of me to my manager. I’m telling her not to book me for the next month, because I’ve hit inspiration and I need to write a new show.”

“What?! Your plan, you said – not for another six months, bitch! Tracy, that’s incredible –”

“It’s a lie. I’m lying to her.”

The line went silent, the kind of silence that follows a mental stumble; Brian swallowed again, shifting in his seat. He pressed a knuckle to his jaw, then reached for the keyboard and highlighted the text in question: _feeling really good, really excited about this, I want to get it down and out before I second-guess –_

“I didn’t want to lie to you too,” he said. “I don’t do that and I’m not gonna start. But I need to get – out. Away. I don’t know.”

He sighed and rubbed at his forehead.

There was a strange sound from the other end of the line, like something – maybe the phone itself – was being fumbled by a body in motion. “Trixie, are you okay?” Katya said, and then, in the same breath, “Can I come over? I want to come over. I think maybe I should come over.”

The concern in Katya’s voice felt like blunt fingernails being shoved into the cartilage up and down his sternum, where it held his ribs in place over his heart and the other soft, important bits. He forced the words out anyway. “I absolutely don’t mean this how it sounds, but I’d prefer you didn’t.”

Another silence.

When Katya finally spoke again, his voice was quiet. “Did I, uh. Did I do something wrong?”

“ _No_ ,” Brian said, as forcefully as he could. “No. Yesterday was amazing. I had – I had the best time.”

To his extreme horror and embarrassment, his eyes started to prickle, just a bit.

“I did too,” Katya said. “I did too, so why – I don’t understand.”

“Okay,” Brian said, “okay, give me a – give me a second.”

He thumbed the phone onto speaker and set it down. He stood up and walked the circumference of his room, the quiet sound of Katya’s breathing following him. His gaze drifted restlessly: over the art on the walls; the open mouth of his closet; the deep blue of his bedsheets, the empty suitcase splayed open on top of them; and, half-hidden by his open door, the crumpled pile of his drag from two nights before. That last held his attention for a moment – then he walked back and picked up his phone again.

“You know how the industry is unsustainable and in eight years tops we’ll all be fucked and poor again?”

“Yeah,” Katya said immediately, like he’d been waiting.

“I think –” Brian said, a low grade nausea burning in his throat, “I mean. I don’t feel like I’m gonna make it eight years. If I don’t get out of this fucking city right now, I don’t think I’m gonna make it another ten minutes.”

He sounded like some dumb-ass kid again by the end, the words tumbling out high, fast, and just shy of hysterical.

“Okay, okay,” Katya said, voice determinedly calm. “So we get you out of here. Email to your manager, and I can get in touch with anyone else who matters, take care of the rest, whatever. You get out. And then –”

His voice caught and he went silent. Brian didn’t want to picture it, but he could, down to every detail. Katya’s knuckles pressed to his mouth, one arm around his waist, shoulders hunched; the way his brows would be drawn together, eyes distant or closed, while he tried not to lose his complete and utter shit. But pushing _that_ image away only conjured up its opposite – sunlight reflecting off blonde hair, and a wide laughing smile, face tipped back to absorb every bit of warmth he could while Brian had stared, heart in his throat.

“Can I call you?” Katya said. The words came out small again, like he was anticipating and preparing himself to accept a _no_.

The speed with which Brian’s priorities could flip was enough to give him whiplash. That was part of the problem. One moment he was freaking out about his life, his career, this ever-increasing feeling that the walls were closing in on him, and the next that was all secondary to how cautious Katya sounded and how _he_ must be feeling. Brian tried so hard to keep his shit together and locked down but he couldn’t be casual about Katya.

“Please call me,” he said, and his voice wasn’t casual at all. “I want you to. Or, like, text – whatever, whenever you can. This isn’t a –” _this isn’t a break-up,_ he didn’t say, because they weren’t dating. Heart in his throat, he amended, “This is about you, us, but not – I’m just trying to figure things out. I don’t want to rush in blind and fuck everything up in the process.”

Katya huffed a laugh. “This is what I don’t like about you, Tracy,” he said. “You’re so _sensible_.”

“Yeah,” said Brian. “Me too.”

They were quiet for another moment. The weight of his decision was settling down on him – the reality that he was really, actually doing this; throwing the brakes, pulling his chute. Or, more accurately, flinging the door open and catapulting himself out of the car at sixty miles-per-hour with a thought and a prayer. His empty suitcase was staring at him from its place of honour in the centre of the room. You’ve already decided to throw your five year plan for a loop, it seemed to say. What’s next?

“I’ll call you so much you’ll get sick of me,” Katya said from the other side of the line. “I will have absolutely zero chill about it, as the youth say. The opposite of chill.”

“No part of this conversation has been chill,” Brian said. He was laughing a little, but like, existentially.

“Performative disinvestment is overrated,” said Katya. He said it in that way he did sometimes – joking, but not for the satisfaction of a punchline. Just to lighten the air, and because it might make Brian smile.

Brian swallowed. “Could you stay on the line?” he said. “While I finish packing?”

There was a breath of weak laughter from the other end. “If you don’t mind listening to me do my dishes, sure.”

For some reason, that set the stinging in Brian’s eyes off again. He thumbed on speaker, then set his phone down, turning to his suitcase. “You actually do your dishes?” he says over his shoulder – it was easier, somehow, facing away. Like Katya could really be in the room, so long as Brian wasn’t looking. “I sort of thought you just… opened a window and aimed for the dumpster after every meal.”

“Bitch, you know I’m opening the bin lid and aiming for the window. Come on.”

Brian packed on automatic – socks, underwear, pants, shirts. No drag. He could hear running water and the faint clinking of metal and porcelain through the line. Katya was quiet, at first, but then he fell into the old habits of years spent on speakerphone from opposite sides of the world, humming tunelessly, occasionally dropping a derisive comment about the poor performance of his meat knives. Brian had been telling him for _ages_ to get those fuckers sharpened. But Katya insisted that his knives would be sharpened by a knife-sharpening truck in the suburbs under a dead and heatless sun, or not at all.

Brian’s life packed up neatly. Without the wigs and the dresses and the makeup and the shoes, it was just one small grey suitcase with a University of Wisconsin sticker peeling on the side. It didn’t take long at all.

He stood staring down at it, and contemplated dumping it out on the bed, packing all his crap up again. That’d buy him another five minutes at least.

There was a sudden silence as the water shut off on the other end of the line. Brian couldn’t help but picture it, the small details: sudsy hands on the taps, a spray of water dampening the front of Katya’s T-shirt, his hair sticking up from when he touched it thoughtlessly. Katya fumbling for a dishcloth to wipe his hands dry and to rub uselessly against his shirt. His kitchen was a narrow thing; two adult men, standing with their backs pressed to opposing counters, would find their knees bumping together as they talked. Not that Brian had ever minded.

At one end of Katya’s kitchen there was a long window, and the light that cut through the space was clean and bright, and it always lit Katya’s eyes up like clear seaglass underwater.

“Trixie?” Katya said.

Brian turned his back on the bed, looking down at the phone. “What if this is the dumbest thing I’ve ever done?”

“That’s a pretty high bar.”

“Well,” Brian said. “You’d know something about highs and bars.”

Katya huffed a short laugh. There was the sound of more movement on the other end – maybe he was boosting himself up to sit on the counter, the way he did sometimes. The silence lasted a few seconds, and then Katya said, “Do you know where you’re gonna go?”

“Not yet,” Brian said, slumping down into his desk chair and picking up the phone again. “I’ve gotta make some calls.”

“You could go stay with my mom,” Katya said, the sound of his smile warm in his voice.

“Oh my god, _bye_.”

There was another silence, this one heavier, final.

“Well, you know how I love a good segue,” said Katya.

Trixie’s mouth did something funny. “Yeah.”

“I should let you go.”

“Yeah.” This time it came out shaky.

“Okay,” Katya said. “Okay – yeah.” More movement; a quiet breath. “Well, Tracy, we’ll always have the Santa Monica Pier. And Palm Springs. And the WOW basement. And your house. And my house. And –”

“You’re the worst person I know,” Brian said, startled into laughter, then, “We’ll talk soon. Love you.”

“Love you too,” Katya said. There was a final pause, and then the zero-gravity silence of a dead phone line.

Or, Brian thought with masochistic fervour, an empty home.

He looked down at the phone in his hand, then to the blinds over his window, and finally at the suitcase on the bed, closed but not zipped shut.

He was doing this. He was really doing this. There was an unmoored feeling in his chest, like some anchor had been cut away with the disconnecting click of the phone; like his feet weren’t quite touching the floor, every part of him suspended in anticipation, like Wile E. Coyote half a step off the cliff. The breath and then the fall.

Fuck.

Before he could second-guess anymore, he reached over to his laptop and hit _send_ on the email.

And that, fuck, that was it – a done deal, completely out of his hands. He pressed his fingers to his jaw, then picked up his phone again, thoughts running a mile a minute. His mom used to say he didn’t get a bee in his bonnet; he had the whole damn hive up there, buzzing restlessly, ready to burst out any second.

Oh, _honey_.

He could go back to Wisconsin, spend a week with his family. Or to Chicago, to sleep on Trannika’s couch, mooching out of his fridge and letting him tease him about his hairline. God, he _missed_ Chicago, but that felt – it felt like going backwards. Running away. It was too much like that first, awful flight back from LA to Milwaukee, when he didn’t know what had gone wrong and the roar of the engine during descent sounded like a thousand voices from every stage of his life reminding him he wasn’t _good enough_.

Jokes on them, Brian took that shit and made it his brand. Hashtag team too much? Team not enough, bitch. _Drag is what I do, pathetic is what I am._

(Was that sad? Sure. But the saddest things are also the funniest. Eventually.)

He shook his head, flicked open his contacts. Bob was the first to catch his eye – New York was far enough, and it wasn’t running away like the Midwest would be. But as much as he’d love to see Bob, New York’s drag scene was almost as big as LA’s, and no matter how irrational he knew he was being, the thought of it made his stomach turn.

Another name jumped out of the list to him. A weirder choice, but – it made some kind of sense to him. He bit the inside of his cheek, tapping the side of the phone with his thumb.

_Hey_ , he typed finally. _Some stuff going on. Might be in ur area for a bit. Any chance i could crash for a few days?_

He wasn’t expecting a quick response, but it came in almost immediately.

_sure! mi casa es su casa dude._

With that… well. Anything but zipping up his bag and walking out the door would be stalling. Brian didn’t believe in stalling. So he shut his laptop and shoved it into a backpack along with his wallet, sunglasses, and notebook; zipped his suitcase shut, and made for the door.

He paused, though, with one foot in the hall. There was a slip of pink fabric caught under the wheels of his bag. He lifted the bag gingerly and set it down against the wall outside, then went back in.

The dress was rumpled but not creased when he picked it up and shook it out; the fabric was soft under his fingers, the kind of soft that meant _expensive_ rather than _worn_. There were multiple pairs of tights on the floor underneath it, tangled all together and smelling of old sweat, and his pink pumps were tumbled haphazardly beside them.

He couldn’t look at the mess without remembering the phone call, two nights before. Kicking off his shoes as he pressed call, throwing his tights and then his dress into the corner where he could pretend they didn’t exist as he waited through the ringing on the other end of the line. Not even bothering to turn on the lights, so his room was lit by just the glow of the streetlight through his blinds. His heart had still been pounding from the sheer overwhelming frustration of the night he’d had, of the show and after; and then Katya had picked up, and he’d said –

Brian shook his head. He hung the dress on a hanger from the doorknob; he threw the tights in the trash beside the desk.

Fifteen minutes later, he was loading his suitcase, his guitar, and his own sorry self into a cab. An hour later, he was at the train station.

“Round trip?” asked the woman behind the till, clicking her long nails together.

He shook his head. The handle on his guitar case slipped in his sweaty grip. “One way.”

When he was seated, guitar under his feet and suitcase in the overhead rack, the sweating turned into shaking. He pressed his hands together in his lap to still them and stared out the window.

It was pushing five when the train finally pulled out of the station. The seat beside him was empty, as was most of the compartment; apparently Tuesday wasn’t a popular day to run away from everyone you know and everything you love. The sky was just beginning to darken outside, the light blues deepening like bruises into purples and indigos with just a flare of orange above the horizon, and it took with it the familiar LA skyline – faster, maybe, than he was ready to see it go. He wrapped his arms around his chest.

The thought of dinner held no real appeal. He ate a granola bar from his bag and watched the city outside become thinner and thinner and finally disappear into California greens. The sky got darker.

He wrote a few lines in his notebook. His heart rate wouldn’t settle; the steady thud of the train along the tracks wasn’t enough to reel it in, like a water wheel trying to restrain a river. And then, all of a sudden, something changed, and he was abruptly and wholly exhausted, eyelids slipping, hand slackening around the wire spiral of his notebook. His head buzzed at some low frequency. He sort of couldn’t feel his fingertips, although he knew they were, like, still there. Obviously.

His notebook went back into his backpack, which he shoved under his seat. The train thundered on. He put his earbuds in and opened his phone, and there, on the screen, was the text convo that had set the wheels on the tracks, as it were. He bit his lip, then screenshotted it, and sent it to Katya with an appropriately apprehensive face emoji and a heart. The screen said it was just after nine.

That done, he switched over to iTunes and thumbed down to the Ls. The soft strains of Linda Ronstadt’s guitar filled his ears, and he bunched up his coat against the window under his head and shut his eyes. _Love will abide, take things in stride_ – he knew this song backwards. _Sounds like good advice but there’s no one at my side._

When he woke up, the greens had all changed, and the shoreline in the distance was grey.

He got a shitty breakfast from the dining compartment then went back to his seat and booted up his laptop, thumbing his phone awake. The first thing he saw was a flurry of notifications from sometime the previous night which had eaten up his screen; the second was that Katya hadn’t replied to his text.

He knew he shouldn’t look at Twitter, but he was weak, okay, and he had like eight more hours on this train and he’d have gone crazy if he didn’t. So he opened the notifications – fewer than if he had tweeted, more than normal if he hadn’t – and scanned through them for the gist. It was, to be fair, pretty obvious.

_@trixiemattel did you watch_

_@katya_zamo is @trixiemattel ur dead dad on a beach again mother_

_@trixiemattel get on periscope!!!!!!!!_

Etc. Etc. Trepidation fluttering in his stomach, he opened periscope – but whatever Katya might have done, it had since been deleted. Sometimes, though, these things wound up on youtube anyway – and sure enough, a quick search pulled up a new video, uploaded just a few hours ago. In the tiny still, Katya was staring off into the distance, the black night sky behind him, a cigarette between his fingers.

Despite his better judgement, Brian opened it.

The camera shook for a few seconds, and through his earbuds, he heard Katya swear softly, and then go, “Okay okay okay. There. Okay.”

The view went still. The camera was propped up somehow, and Katya was on his balcony; he stepped away and leaned back against the stuccoed wall. The light from inside was warm against one side of his face. He took a drag from his cigarette and blew it out towards the dark.

“So,” he said. “So I know that I’m not ever really funny on these things. I’m going to be especially unfunny tonight, probably. You should probably all leave now – or don’t, I don’t care. Whatever.”

His voice was tight, worked up, and Brian’s chest clenched.

“And I’m not gonna – I don’t have a lot to say. I’m just, I’m awake, I’m thinking, I’m thinking, I can’t stop thinking, and sometimes this helps. Arranges the thoughts into a way that makes sense to even me. Because – and here’s where you’re not going to understand, and that’s okay – I’m on a beach, and I’m still there, right now. I’m frozen in that one second. And I can’t stop thinking about it.”

Katya took another drag, then laughed, mouth crooked.

“The comments are off, but no, that’s not a Contact reference. Or maybe it is. What’s it to you, Brenda?

Anyway. The only dead one here is me. Or, dying – time is a flat circle, mama, and we’re all just living in it. Or not living in it. Or waiting on a beach. I keep thinking, what if I go back, what if I go back and sit down in the sand and refuse to leave until –

God.”

Brian had a hand pressed over his mouth. He wasn’t crying, but it felt a little like he should be.

“You know what,” Katya said. “No. This was not my best idea. Okay. Bye.”

He reached forward to his phone, his bright eyes taking up most of the frame for just one second, and then it went black.

Brian put his phone down.

The next eight hours were a blur. The sunny west drove deeper into the pacific north, the skies clouding over, the greens finding new, more saturated hues, bloated with their own verdant life. It didn’t rain. Brian stared blankly at his notebook for most of it. He’d written one line and then stalled out, circling it over and over again with his pen. _The tide and the tracks,_ he’d scrawled, _each with their own pull, and I can’t hide, and I can’t go back; but you –_

But _what_ , he kept asking himself.

When the train settled into the station, the sun was half-sunk, thin rays creeping between white clouds in the west. He gathered his things and exited the train in an anonymous mass – all the people that had been picked up between home and here. There were cabs waiting outside; he stood in line, turning his phone on and off restlessly, then loaded his things into the car, read out the address with the kind of care you use when you don’t really know where you’re going. He’d only been there once, after all.

The city that passed by the windows was different than anywhere he’d ever lived in some undefinable way – and as he stared out at the quiet streets and the late-night coffee shop lights, something in his ribs loosened and expanded.

He breathed in deeply and – it was stupid, but he would swear even the air tasted different.

Look. He never said he wasn’t a cliché.

The cab slowed on a quiet street in front of a walk-up apartment block, the kind that was taller than it was wide, with one door set in the street between a coffee shop and a small secondhand bookstore. Brian paid and thanked the cabbie, taking his guitar and backpack out with him and retrieving his suitcase from the trunk. The cab peeled away from the curb as he stared up at the building in front of him, the white-railed balconies on the second and third floors. It was the second floor he was looking at; from the street, he could make out tealights on the wide rail, a lawn chair, a few empties around its feet.

His mouth crooked up in a bit of a smile.

There was a buzzer pad beside the door with three buttons, none of them labeled. Making an educated guess, he pressed the second one, and from inside he heard a distant bell, and then, a moment later, the clatter of feet.

Then the door swung open.

“Shit, dude – hi!” Adore said. “Sorry, I wasn’t, like, one hundred percent sure when you’d be getting here. I’m a little stoned.”

“I’m friends with Katya,” said Brian automatically, taking in the boxers, the Indigo Girls tanktop, and the long brown hair. “I think I’ll survive.”

Adore grinned, and Brian realized he was grinning back, just a little.

“Come on in,” Adore said. “Let me take your bag. And be careful on the stairs. Swear to god, I nearly die every time.”

Brian hefted his guitar case and followed her in, and up. Neither of them died, but the slow sound of the door swinging shut behind him as he ascended felt – like the strong downbeat at the end of a song. A little too close; a little too final.

Enough with the bullshit melodrama, he told himself. It’s just a fucking door.

He held his phone tightly in his pocket the whole way up, but it didn’t vibrate and it didn’t ring.

 

 


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> chapter 2! more sadness, more bad jokes. (also, this godforsaken website won't let me use emojis? what the fuck is the POINT. if u know how to make it do that pls let me know.)

_FROM: BOB - 11:03 AM - Thursday August 3rd, 2017_

_Your bf is talking crazy online again, u should prob check in w her_

_The one who looks like the baby eater from pan’s labyrinth_

_Girl_

_Txt me when u have a sec ok, it’s been a while_

 

_*_

 

“So I cleared out my drag and opened a window last night – if it still stinks a little, I’ve got these candles that smell really fucking good, I can hook you up.”

“This is great, thanks,” Brian said, looking around. “Really, thank you so much for this. It’ll just be a few days while I figure out what’s next.”

“It’s no problem, girl. Whatever you need.” Adore swung her arms at her side. “Listen –”

Somewhere in the living room, a phone started blasting Britney’s _Lucky_.

Adore twitched in its direction, like a startled dog; “Shit,” she said, “I’ve gotta take that. Eat whatever’s in the fridge, I’ll do groceries later, and if you can find booze it’s yours but I’m pretty sure I’ve cleaned this place _out_ , man. I’m coming, I’m coming!” she called in the direction of the phone as she disappeared through the door.

Brian dropped his guitar on the bed. Then he sat down beside it, at a bit of a loss.

Adore poked her head back around the frame.

“Hey, do you prefer, uh –”

The phone was still going off. “Uh,” Brian said, glancing over Adore’s shoulder.

Adore flapped a hand. “I know who it is, I can call them back. Just, like, we’ve only really hung out at shows. Do you prefer I call you one way or the other?”

“Trixie, I guess,” Brian said after a moment. He shrugged. “Trixie’s fine.”

“Cool,” said Adore with a smile. She was out the door before Brian could ask her the same.

Brian looked at the door, falling shut, then at the walls, and then down at the bedspread underneath him.

When he finally went out to the kitchen, Adore was on the couch, phone at her ear and knees pulled up to her chest. She didn’t seem to notice Brian; to be fair, she barely seemed to be listening to whoever was on the other end of the line.

Brian got himself some water, made a sandwich out of the scraps left over in the fridge, and slipped back into the guest room as quietly as he could. He ate sitting on the floor – there was no desk or chair in the room, and he wasn’t going to eat on somebody else’s bed; his mother had raised him, well, not right, but pretty okay – with his laptop balanced on his knees, watching some British baking show that Kim was obsessed with to calm his nerves before he checked his email or twitter.

He could hear Adore from outside, just a little, talking in a more serious tone than he’d ever heard from her. And that was weird, but there was no part of this that _wasn’t_ weird. He was sitting on Adore Delano’s floor in Seattle; the nice, antique hardwood was biting into his ass. Like. Weird didn’t begin to cover it.

“What the fuck am I doing,” he said under his breath, then he pulled his phone out of his pocket like he’d been dying to since he arrived and woke it up.

There was nothing new from Katya under the column of message bubbles from Bob, which he’d received but not answered that morning. He tapped in his password and opened iMessage, scrolled past Bob with a mild guilty itch, and opened his and Katya’s chat. He thought for a moment, then started typing.

_TO: Katya - 7:22 PM_

_some white girl’s been talking about me on the internet again_

 He followed it up with a heart.

The white ellipsis appeared almost immediately, flickering in and out of view, but no reply came.

After a minute, he typed and sent,

_TO: Katya_

_Check in girl_

The ellipsis flickered one more time and then a response appeared within seconds. One line: the  _all good_ emoji, index finger and thumb pressed together. Nothing else.

 

His shoulders, which had been rising with the ringing of early alarm bells in his head, dropped and loosened. The _uncommunicative but will survive_ signal they’d agreed on during one of the more hellish stretches of touring in 2015 was doing its job. He sent back another heart, then a picture he’d taken of his room – guitar on the bed, bags on the floor, and the hooks sticking out of the walls where, he assumed, clothing lines had hung to hold up Adore’s drag. His knees and his dinner balanced on top of them (the laptop having been abandoned to the floor before he could break it, juggling all his things like Icarus flying into the sun) were in the foreground, slightly out of focus.

He sent it over and added,

_I love art_

Katya responded with a heart wrapped up in a bow.

Around eleven, Brian heard the door outside open and close, and then, very faintly, footsteps on the stairs. When he poked his nose out of the guest room, the living room was empty, Adore’s phone lying abandoned on the coffee table. An unsettling, absolute quiet blanketed the apartment.

He slipped through the living room, then stood under the shower for a good twenty minutes regretting every choice he’d ever made.

Adore was back when he came out, sitting at the table that stood against the island separating the living room from the kitchen. Takeout containers covered the table and the smell of Chinese food filled the air.

“Hey!” she said when she saw Brian, brightening. “Grab a fork, I got a shitton of everything. You’re veggie, right?”

“Yeah,” Brian said. “But I’m, like, Wisconsin-veggie, not LA-veggie. If there’s nothing else I’ll eat it.”

“Same, girl. I'll never turn down food - I'm not on that LA detoxing shit. That ain't me, bae,” said Adore, sliding a carton down to the end of the table.

Brian laughed as he sat. “ _It ain't me, bae,_ ” he sang, not fully expecting Adore to get it, but her eyes lit up and she poked her fork fervently in his direction.

“I fucking _love_ Johnny Cash,” she said. “Hang on, where’s my laptop – you mind if I put on some music?”

Brian waved his carton, like, _please, go ahead,_ but Adore was already bouncing out of her seat and rushing off before he’d even finished the gesture. A few moments later the _Folsom Prison Blues_ rumbled out across the apartment – and the space suddenly felt less hollow, the corners seemed less angular, and something about this airy Seattle rental with its expensive antique furniture and discordant hippie love beads was suddenly akin to the small warmth of his grandparents’ old home.

He tipped his head back on his neck, stretching out the aches, and hummed along, fingers marking out chords on the side of his carton.

“Have you listened to any of the stuff June did by herself?” he called across the room. “ _Wildwood Flower_ will change your fucking life.”

There was no answer. A moment later, Adore came back out of her room, frowning slightly as she typed away on her phone.

Brian watched for a second, then ducked his head and returned to his food.

He was halfway through his carton before Adore looked up again, setting her phone down on the table. “Sorry, sorry,” she said. “My mom would murder me for having my phone at dinner with a guest here.”

Brian waved her off. “It’s your house, girl.”

“Still –” Her phone buzzed insistently, rattling against the table. “For _fuck’s_ sake,” she muttered, grabbing at it.

There was some more rapid-verging-on-furious typing. Brian glanced over every few seconds, a thought slowly occurring to him. He chewed methodically through the bite he’d just taken but barely tasted it at all; when Adore _kept_ typing, hitting the top of the screen intermittently and scrolling like she was moving between multiple conversations, his stomach turned over and he blurted, “Have you told anyone I’m staying here with you?”

Adore looked up. Her eyes darted across his face for a moment, then she frowned, like what she saw wasn’t adding up. “No,” she said.

“Okay.” Brian tapped his fingers against the side of his carton. “Listen, could we, like… keep it between us? Me being here?”

“Here as in my place or here as in Seattle?”

“Seattle.”

Adore was still looking at him like that, brows pinched together, and he waited for the question he knew was coming – _are you okay?_ Or, worse, _do you want to talk about it?_

Instead, Adore nodded slowly. “Yeah, for sure.”

The moment stood, suspended; the thudding guitar-beat filled the room in their stead. _If they freed me from this prison, if that railroad train were mine_ , the walls echoed. _I bet I’d move it farther, a little farther down the line –_

Adore’s mouth moved, like she was biting at the inside of her lip, but then she relaxed and turned back to her food. “My brothers used to blast Johnny Cash in the backyard,” she said, like an offering. “You know, holding Grandma’s antique lamp like a guitar in front of their chests and yelling about prison.”

“Oh my god, same,” Brian said, laughing out of sheer surprise. “Well, my brother with Grandma’s lamp. It was my Granddad who’d put the tape on in the first place, so really, who’s to blame here?”

Adore grinned. “You and me, we knew better than to fuck with Grandma’s porcelain.”

“Bitch, completely,” Brian said, then barked a laugh. “You know how it is – the only family antiquity I ever got in trouble for handling was my great-uncle’s c–”

Adore’s phone buzzed again.

“Trixie Mattel, you are _fucked_ ,” said Adore through her laughter, grabbing haphazardly at her phone. “Like, in the head. No wonder Bianca likes you.”

Brian gasped and pretended to swoon.

“Fucked,” Adore repeated. Then she glanced down at her screen and sighed. “Sorry, I’ve gotta make another call.”

The moment she was back in her room, that same pall fell across the floor again; the feeling that Brian was so unthinkably out of place that the whole room was being distorted around him, like water slopping out of a previously-peaceful tub. He looked at the table. From the other room, the music stopped. He could hear Adore talking, staccato, rapid words piling up like a highway crash and then dropping into silence. If he tried, he could probably make out what she was saying.

She still wasn’t back by the time he’d finished his food. She’d taken one carton with her; he cleared away the rest into the kitchen, where he searched briefly for containers before becoming uncomfortable with the idea of digging through somebody else’s cupboards. There was a roll of saranwrap, no box, on the marble-finish countertop, so he used that to wrap the remaining food up as airtight as possible. He stacked them in the fridge (which was, for the record, an absolute graveyard) and grabbed one of the beers in the door for himself. He was just cracking the cap with the opener in the sink – he wasn’t the kind of gay who carried a swiss army knife, although he suspected that would be his final evolution – when Adore came back in, still on the phone.

He tipped his beer at her, offering. She shook her head. She’d taken off her wig; there was a bobby pin still sticking out from her bangs. The phone was pressed to her ear again and she looked like she was considering whether to make her warranty worth it. A new, unlit joint was clutched between the fingers of her other hand.

Whoever was on the other end must have said something _particularly_ stupid, because she rolled her eyes and started off towards the balcony. She made an apologetic face at him across the room but he waved her off, mouthing _good luck_ as he made his way to the guest room.

With the door shut behind him, the bare space felt like it was staring into his soul. Off-white walls, red sheets and duvet. No pictures.

To be totally fair, his own bedroom was pretty minimalist too. But it was like this little room was wholly separate from the rest of the apartment, which – while obviously an expensive pre-furnished rental – was littered with the detritus of life: pictures of Adore’s family stuck up all over the fridge, an oversized sweater slung over the back of the couch, half-burnt prayer candles on the mantle, and sheet music scattered over the coffee table.

It’s the guest room, he reminded himself. It’s the _drag_ _room_. He hadn’t left home expecting to find home.

He was being stupid.

Halfway through his beer, his phone buzzed. He was stretched out on the bed in his boxers with a book; when he heard it go off across the room, he nearly spilled all over himself in his haste to get to it. He tugged it out of his jeans’ pocket and woke the screen up, already telling himself he was being an idiot for hoping so hard, but there it was – a new message notification from Katya.

_I’m sorry about the periscope_ , it read.

He flew through his password and opened his messages. Settling himself cross-legged on the end of the mattress, he hunched over his phone and typed,

_Girl no you dont have to be sorry for that. Did you say antyhign about me? No._

_Yes_ , Katya replied.

He rolled his eyes, even though the message – the simple honesty of it – made something in his chest squeeze tight. _Okay, but not so anyone else could tell for sure_ , he typed.

_Should have asked tho. Or not done it at all. You dont like having your shit out there & here i am laying my corpse out for public autopsy with ur name in sharpie on my spleen_

Brian laughed under his breath.

_Your spleen? Wtf even is a spleen_

_All other organs completely atrophied :( mass necrosis :( spleen’s the only thing left but it’s urs_ , Katya sent.

Brian navigated out of his messages and flicked open Safari to google “spleen,” then he burst out laughing, half-yelling, before he remembered where he was. He screenshotted the page and sent it over.

_U CAN KEEP UR ATROPHIED CORPSE BLOOD BITCH_

And then, because he couldn’t resist: _lucy, u got some ‘spleenin to do._

_AHHHHHHHHHH,_ Katya replied.

Brian grinned down at his phone while the little ellipses kept on flickering. He had five more puns off the top of his head and two of them were actually good – but then the next message came through, and the smile slid off his face.

_I am sorry though._

And then,

_I dont know all of why you left but i can guess part of it. And i shouldnt have done that, knowing it._

_I feel like i chased u away & then made it worse._

Brian swallowed. He looked away from his phone, up and out the window at the stretch of Seattle visible over the low roof of the building across the street – grey buildings, yellow lights, deep blue sky. Leafy green unfurled between the rows of buildings, trees demarcating where the gap of the street escaped the naked and distant eye. At the farthest edge of his vision, the navy-black of the sky melted into the ocean on the horizon. And then there was him – lost somewhere in the middle of it.

Was this running away? Sort of. Was it worse?

He turned back to his phone and thumbed it awake again. He typed, _you didn’t. Don’t be stupid._

The beginnings of a response flickered on the left side of the screen; he raced to finish – _i don’t want you to not be you. i LIKE you._

The ellipsis disappeared.

Brian yawned into his palm, dropped back onto the bed and scooted up until his head was on the pillow. Pushing up onto his elbow, he stretched to turn off the bedside lamp; the clock at the top of his phone’s screen said it was pushing 12:30 and he was completely wiped. Fuck, he was _old_.

Speaking of old, Katya was typing again.

_I like u too. Shocking i know. I still feel bad but i wont have a breakdown or anything over it, promise_

Brian grinned tiredly.

_I’m not worth a breakdown? I thought i was on ur spleen_

_Go to bed you wretched cunt_ , Katya replied.

Brian sent another heart emoji, then switched his phone to sleep mode, shut his eyes and relaxed back. The wall on his left glowed dimly with light from the window, which had no curtains, but it wasn’t enough to keep him awake. His eyelids grew heavy. He kept thinking hazily, like it was coming from somewhere outside his own body, about how Katya would smile around the words if he’d spoken that last text aloud.

When you were on the road as much as he was, it was the little things that mattered the most, the little things you carried with you. He moved too much to carry a lot. But the way Katya’s voice sounded when he smiled – Brian had carried that close, these last three years.

He was still thinking about it when he fell asleep, the low murmur of Adore on the phone whispering through the walls and Seattle grey and restful outside.

 

*

 

The next two days were weird.

It wasn’t that Brian didn’t know how to relax. It was just that he didn’t know how to be still. He hid out in his room but his mind ran off without him, thoughts spinning from Seattle to LA and back again. The frantic energy would build up inside him until he had to go outside, fuss around in the fridge without picking anything, step onto the balcony for just a minute before going back inside – struck by the deeply paranoid conviction that someone was watching him.

_Fucking crazy._

So he’d go back in his room, chip away at the book he’d brought – Gillian Flynn’s depiction of the Midwest was unflattering but one hundred percent accurate, right down to the murder rate – firmly not-thinking about his laptop, waiting, and the whole wide internet out there and all the speculating that may or may not be happening.

It had been one day, he told himself. One and a half now. There was no speculating.

_Fucking_ , fucking crazy. He was breaking away from dire realist in the direction of paranoid schizophrenic. But he’d sit there, or lie there, as the case may be, and he’d flip pages until he realized he wasn’t reading at all, and then he’d put the book down and just _think_ , about all the shit he was doing wrong, the massive and ominous precedent of shit he’d done wrong in the past, all the responsibilities he was letting slide, the momentum he was losing by the minute, and, worst of all, Katya.

And eventually he’d reach some dumb-ass breaking point and repeat the whole pattern. It’s not like the fridge had gotten more full. It’s not like he was actually hungry.

(What he wanted more than anything  more than anything was to pick up his guitar, but the thought of interrupting the afternoon quiet like that made his stomach turn.)

To make it worse, Adore kept catching him on these ridiculous trips. Apparently she was as generous as she was talented because instead of looking at him like he was a lunatic or kicking him out of her house, she’d smile, like seeing him in her living room was completely normal –  and Brian would echo it, his whole body suffused with awkwardness.

The fifth time it happened, Adore was just getting off a call. She reached out to grab his arm as he was passing by to say, “Hey, tacos tonight?”

And Brian said yes, and then, remembering the previous night, “I never really got around to asking. Do you have a preference? Like, Adore, or –?”

“Adore’s good,” she said. She blew her bangs – short again today – out of her eyes. “I feel like I’m always a little bit in drag, you know? And anyway, only my family calls me Danny all the time.”

“Same,” Brian said, huffing a laugh. “The family thing, I mean.”

And then, at a loss for the next conversational turn, he pretended the plate of microwaved leftovers he was carrying – this trip being the first and only time he actually had a reason to leave the room – had suddenly become very hot, and juggled it awkwardly as he retreated with a sheepish smile.

That was it. That was the whole conversation.

‘Tacos tonight’ was actually a bag of veggie tacos Adore pressed into his hands on her way out to the balcony, phone pressed to her ear. Brian didn’t mind. He was becoming more and more uncomfortable with the realization that it wasn’t just Adore’s guest room he was crashing in on. It was her _life_.

When your skill set is limited to being a real person around your friends and family and a fake person around random strangers, you’re kind of fucked for being a real person around a basically-stranger.

He texted Katya:

_can’t remember how to interact with ppl when they’re not paying and lining up to meet me. do u know a good therapist._

Katya sent him a skull emoji and a phone number. He laughed at the first; the second he stared at for a long time, then resolved to pretend it never happened.

Thursday started with Adore knocking on his door around ten to let him know she’d be livestreaming in the living room, and Brian smiling painfully to try to hide the fact that his palms had gone all sweaty. He ducked back in his room and stayed there for two hours, long past when Adore went quiet outside and the live vid must have ended. His heart rate kept picking up at random moments, which his high school level biology told him wasn’t really supposed to happen.

A little while later, Adore knocked again.

“What’s up,” Brian said, swinging the door open. A guitar was thrust immediately in his direction, so fast he had to throw his hands out to stop it before the neck could hit the doorframe.

“Oh, shit,” said Adore, and then, “Hey. Wanna teach me to play?”

Brian stared, and then he felt one side of his mouth tick up. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

They sat on the couch, turned towards each other, Adore with her piece of shit Yamaha (he wasn’t being mean for the sake of it, it really was a piece of shit) and him with his Gibson. She showed him the few chords she knew, fingers wobbly against the frets, glancing up at him under her bangs to check if she was doing it right. He remembered, suddenly and intensely, holding his Granddad’s guitar for the first time. How the strings pinched his fingers. He could almost smell the sage his Grandma hung in the windows, which filled the kitchen with a faint perfume on breezy summer days.

“Don’t press too close to the metal, it can mess with your pitch,” he said. “When you’re just learning you’ve gotta really nail the placement before you can fuck around with it. Like scales and runs, right?” He played a few chords of his own, clean as windchimes. “You do it right, and then you fuck it up. Intentionally.”

“It huuurts,” Adore whined. She laughed as she stretched her pinky for the third fret and slipped. “Oh my god, fuck _this_!”

“Suck it up, buttercup,” said Brian, grinning. “Here. The trick is to not think about how much it hurts or how bad you sound. What’s a song you really like?”

_“Hit Me Baby One More Time.”_

Adore had a shit-eating grin on her face, but if she thought Brian doesn’t know every word, she’d pegged him as the wrong bitch. “Okay, that’s – hang on – four chords, you know three of them. This is D minor,” he said, and demonstrated. “But don’t worry about getting it perfect. This is more about your fingers learning where they’re supposed to be. So four chords, and the rhythm is something like…”

He played the first line – four-four time, with a folk bent to the rhythm.

“Shut the fuck up,” said Adore, staring at him wide-eyed and laughing in disbelief.

“Don’t shut up, copy me,” Brian said. He was laughing too, playing the chords over and over. “Guitar is about rhythm as much as melody. The song is four-four, but you don’t strum four times to four beats precisely. Come on, do the upstroke, don’t be scared of it.”

_“Don’t be scared of the upstroke,_ ” Adore wheezed, and Brian gave a high-pitched scream of laughter.

“Um, this is serious,” he said, “why don’t you respect my art?”

Adore played an astonishingly sour chord and swore. “I don’t believe in, like, putting restrictions on what art is and stuff, but girl, I’m pretty sure this isn’t it.”

“Have a little faith in me,” said Brian. He played the chords through one more time then came in, quiet overtop, loading country into the vowels. “ _Oh baby baby how was I supposed to know…”_

Adore burst out laughing, then broke in, “Not to be scared of upstrokes.”

“Bitch! Oh my god.” Brian thought quickly. _“Oh baby baby I shouldn’t have let you go… dick like a mighty oak, yeah.”_

Adore got up and started doing the iconic knee-socks-and-pigtails hallway choreo, shoulders shimmying, and Brian nearly dropped his guitar out of his lap he was laughing so hard.

But then they did some Fleetwood Mac, and some Lauryn Hill, and even a little Johnny Cash, although neither of them could sing low enough. And it was – kind of great. Just jamming, not on stage or in a club but in a home, where the acoustics weren’t great but the company was.

On Friday, Adore went out in the morning before Brian woke up, and didn’t come back until the sun was starting to set beyond the balcony, an orange glow covering the living room floor. She stopped in the front hall, shadowed; Brian, sitting on the couch with his guitar in his lap, couldn’t make out her face, but he could see the slump of her shoulders and her hands fisted at her sides.

“Adore?” he said, quietly.

She looked up, and then stepped further into the apartment so the tangerine light fell on her face. Her mouth was pinched tight. For the first time, Brian noticed faint stress lines around the corners of her eyes.

“Sorry,” she said. “Long day. What’s up?”

“The usual,” said Brian, shrugging a little. He reached up to fuss with back of his cap where it rested against his forehead. “I think a pigeon shat on the balcony. You should get a cat or something.”

Adore sighed, long and heavy. Then she dropped her bag and jacket to the ground and walked past him to the sliding doors, ragged converse scuffing against the floor. She didn’t even look at the site of the unfortunate incident; she just circled it on her way to the railing, where she propped her elbows up and leaned out, looking across the street at the city beyond.

After a minute, she put her head in her hands.

Brian fidgeted with his guitar, tension creeping up his spine like a pernicious weed. That feeling that had been so successfully foiled the previous afternoon – that he was _intruding_ – was back. He curled his fingers tightly around the frets so the metal bit into his skin; then he picked up his guitar and retreated into the guest room, as quietly as he could.

At some point he dozed off; it was pitch dark outside his window when he woke, and he could hear Adore moving around the apartment restlessly. Not on her phone, like she often was. Just moving around.

He slept in fits and starts, and each time he drifted to consciousness he could hear her out there, still awake, wandering the contours of her home through the night like some anxious ghost.

 

*

 

Adore was still out there the next morning when he woke up, blearily stumbling out of his room at seven AM – one leg thrown over the back of the couch, painted toes catching the early light, fully crashed out. Even asleep, she was clutching her phone to her stomach, white-knuckled. He looked at her for a long moment. There was some kind of conclusion percolating in his brain, just out of reach; he felt, weirdly, like he was making a decision, although he wasn’t sure what it was yet.

She started awake with a grunt fifteen minutes later as veggie bacon sizzled on the stove.

“I’ll be running that off for a week, you fucking asshole,” she mumbled, draping one arm dramatically over her eyes.

Brian chuckled. “It’s veggie, girl,” he said. “No running required.”

“I love you,” she said plaintively, the words muffled against her skin. “Please stay forever.”

He pushed some bread into the toaster and scraped at the pan a few more times. Eyes glued to what he was doing, and with as much nonchalance as possible, he asked, “You get much sleep at all?”

She didn’t answer. She was staring up at the ceiling when he looked over his shoulder, her gaze distant, like the day before was coming back to her in one fell swoop. Brian was familiar with that particular feeling.

The decision – the one he’d been percolating on – reached him all at once.

“Adore?” he said. When she didn’t say anything, he tried, “Danny?”

She blinked and looked at him. “Yeah?”

“Do you, uh,” he said, then told himself _suck it up_ and pushed the rest out – “Do you have anything going on today? ‘Cause I was kinda thinking it would be nice to like. Go out. Do something.”

Adore sat up fully, crossing her arms over the armrest and looking at him inquisitively. Which was fair. He hadn’t left the house in the three days he’d been there so far. “You want to go out?”

_No_. “Yeah. I mean, if you want.”

Her face lit up, like he’d thought it might. “ _Yes_ ,” she said. “Yes, fuck yes. I’ll give you the fucking tour, man. Seattle is literally so fucking stunning, you’re gonna – shit, Pike Place Market, you’re gonna go crazy. It’s like Chicago on speed, if it was way more white and smelled like fish.”

“I think the important question here is,” Brian said, sidetracked from his own anxiety, “when will we have a queen who’ll roll around on the docks for an hour before a show and go out on stage serving _fish_? Like giving you _realness_ , honey. When will we have that queen?”

“Katya,” Adore pointed out. When he started laughing, she said, “No, I’m so serious. She’s gonna be living in a sea shack collecting beer caps and colourful glass from the shore to cast spells on people. I give it ten years but I’m telling you, it’s gonna happen.”

“Oh bitch, completely,” Brian said, grinning, then, “Shit, hang on,” as the bacon started to blacken and smoke. Once it was safely off the stove and onto a plate, he turned back. “So, Pike Market?”

“ _Pike_ _Place Market,_ ” said Adore. “Yes, fully yes. I don’t think stuff opens until, like, ten, so let’s eat, and then, I dunno, nap, and head out in like two hours. Seriously, Trixie, this is gonna be the best. Like you’re not even ready.”

Two hours, a plateful of bacon each, and some napping later, they left the house on foot, and twenty minutes later a flare of neon red appeared between two curtaining buildings. They emerged onto the street directly in face of the great fluorescent sign: PUBLIC MARKET CENTER, it read, on three levels of rails above a single-level shopping arcade, with a great clock-face suspended on the right side of the rails. It was only going on ten-thirty, but the entryway was bursting with flowers, the street outside awash with pedestrians going in, going out, or gawking as they passed by.

“Holy shit,” Brian said, and Adore turned to him and grinned.

“Get ready to lose your fucking mind,” she agreed.

He was so busy staring in every direction around him as they entered that he barely even registered the crowd; and it didn’t matter, because every other person was craning their neck doing the same. They entered into a farmer’s market, where stalls of brightly coloured fruits and vegetables were stacked one on top of another. Neon signs and banners overhead directed visitors and advertised wares; when it wasn’t food it was flowers, roses, sunflowers, carnations in gorgeous arrangements, eye-catchingly vibrant.

With a fiver Brian bought himself a pear while Adore went for a _banana_ – “this is definitely not local,” she said, laughing, then proceeded to mime deep-throating it in the middle of a crowd of tourists while Brian giggled.

Past the farmer’s market there were cheeses, fresh meats, and, as promised, so much fish and salt he had to cover his nose for a second, although he was pretty sure that was rude.

“I’m from the country, bitch!” he said when Adore laughed at him. “I thought the ocean was something my brother made up to screw with me until I was, like, thirteen!”

“Shut up, you did not,” said Adore, shoving at his shoulder. Her grin was bright in the thin rays of sunshine that slipped through the slats overhead; she looked like she’d forgotten the previous day entirely. Which was exactly the point, and which made the way Brian twitched any time a stranger looked at him a second too long almost worth it.

There were bakeries and cafés further down the walkway, which seemed to go on forever, but Adore pulled him away and down some stairs. He followed the bobbing of her tiny ponytail – held up by one of those stupid two-loop elastics with the little plastic balls, which, yes – down to a second, lower level, where there were fewer people and he could actually see the wooden floors under their feet. The stores were more artisanal here – leatherworks, glass and jewelry, some vintage clothes stores they were going to have to _demolish_ later, and –

“There,” he said, tugging at her arm, “There, there, tell me we’re going there –”

“ _Duh_.”

A magic shop, the facade papered with old circus posters in red and black; inside, it was somehow two floors (“How?” he demanded, to which Adore replied, “Magic, bitch!”), the walls lined with books, magic kits stacked on tables, with a long counter on the left filled with pendulums, crystal balls, earrings, bangles, and rings. There was everything from whoopie cushions and itching powder to tarot sets stuffed in every inch of square space; and in the dead center of this colourful chaos stood a big glass box, like an old-school cinema popcorn maker or one of those stuffed animal claw games. It said _FORTUNE TELLER_ in purple neon on the top. Inside there was a bust of a withered old woman; she had one hand up in some witchy gesture while the other was held out flat, cards splayed out in it face-down. She frowned out at the observer from under disturbed eyebrows, like she didn’t quite approve.

“ _This_ … is the best thing I’ve ever seen,” Brian said, eyes wide.

Adore had already peeled off to talk tarot spreads with the woman behind the counter, with whom she seemed to be on a first name basis. Brian huffed a laugh, then turned back to the glass case, which was calling to him something fierce. He walked over, pulling out his phone as he went.

_Katya would love this,_ he thought, and took a quick picture and sent it to her.

_I can’t believe u followed me to seattle_ , he typed, and then, _the humidity is really bad for ur skin, huh?_

Katya replied with a string of exclamation marks followed shortly by a _BITCH. YES._

_Smh_ , he sent, then tucked his phone away again.

“Hey!” Adore called from behind him. “You want Steph to read your palm? Swear to god, it’s some real shit, man.”

“Stop it,” Brian called back, startling the woman behind the counter into laughter.

A larger group of tourists burst in then, college-aged, filling the center of the space and pointing everywhere excitedly. Brian made a face at Adore over their heads as he shifted back towards the wall to avoid them.

These kids weren’t _really_ that much younger than him, but they looked like – god. Babies. A few noticed him looking and looked back; he turned away to inspect the books on the shelf behind him, tapping his knuckles frenetically against his thigh.

When no one approached him after a minute or so, he went from fake-looking at the titles to actually looking, and then browsing, and then he found himself flipping open a small book titled _Witches’ Wisdom On Surviving The Apocalypse_ , which turned out to be full of free verse poems. One of them began:

 

_We were burning long before you put your pyre under us_

_That’s where the power is_

_Start there._

 

He didn’t know a lot about poetry, so he couldn’t say if it was good or not. Probably there would be more than one copy stocked if it was. Still, when the crowd moved on to the second floor, he kept hold of it as he approached the counter – where Adore, he realized, frowning, had disappeared.

“You want me to ring that up for you, doll?” said the woman – Steph? – behind the counter. She was probably in her late forties, fuzzy curly mom hair, black cardigan, anatomically-correct heart necklace with tiny inscriptions he couldn’t read running along the big ventricular arteries. She was probably crazy; he liked her more or less immediately.

“Did you see which way, uh, Danny went? I think I’ve lost him.”

“Skipped up to the staff roof for a bit, I’ll show you where.” She looked down at the book in his hands and nodded. “You want me to ring that up for you?”

Brian looked down too, to where he’d been running his thumb across the two ravens on the cover unconsciously. “Yeah,” he said. “I have a friend who’ll go nuts for this.”

“You should read it too,” Steph said, accepting his card. “You look like you’ve seen a bit of apocalypse yourself. Door behind me, up the stairs. It’s supposed to be just staff, but Danny’s a sweetheart and he’s by all the time so we let him up.”

He nodded his thanks and waved off the offer of a little bag, ducking around the counter with the book still in hand. Through the door and up too many stairs led him to a beige landing and another door; through this one, he emerged into the sunlight, gulls overhead, and for a moment, staring up at the sky, he forgot where he was entirely.

“Trixie!”

He jerked back to himself, and went over to join Adore at the edge of the roof, leaning against a thick metal railing, staring out at the grey-green stretch of the ocean and the breaking waves.

“Sorry,” said Adore. “I meant to be back down before you noticed, but I guess I just – lost track of time.”

She had a lit joint in one hand, gaze distant.

“You okay, girl?” Brian said, hooking his elbows over the rail.

Adore looked at him sideways, like, _really_?

And – okay, that was fair. It’s not like Brian was one to talk.

Adore brought the joint to her mouth and inhaled deeply; she held her breath, then exhaled, a thin white plume drifting up into the robin’s egg blue of the sky.

“Crowds give me the shakes sometimes,” she said. “You know?”

Brian looked down at the toes of his sneakers poking out past the lip of the roof, then across at the water. The wind off the ocean ruffled the pages of his book as he held it up to shade his eyes.

“I don’t know if ‘shakes’ is the right word, but. Yeah.” He forced a smile. “That’s just where I live now.”

It was such a deeply insufficient answer, but when he tried to force anything else out, his mouth felt like it was stuffed full of cotton; his throat closed up and he had to swallow, grit his teeth, look back out at the water.

“Trixie.”

He looked over. Adore was watching him, gaze steady.

“You can stay as long as you need,” she said. “I mean that.”

He swallowed again and nodded.

She turned back to look out too. The August sun beat down, but with the breeze at their faces, it wasn’t overwhelming. It was like the warmth of two bodies under a duvet; despite the conversation, Brian felt himself relaxing, eyes slipping shut and face tipping up towards the light.

He remembered walking down the Santa Monica Pier with Katya; he remembered taking Katya’s hand, and Katya’s brilliant smile when he did. And that same feeling – like all his stressors, all the shit in his life that he couldn’t seem to outpace or outwit, were melting away.

Adore nudged him in the side a few minutes later. “Listen,” she said, “some friends invited me out tonight for drinks at this cute little bar on Capitol Hill. You wanna come? It’s super chill. I have a show there later this month, actually.”

Brian shrugged his shoulders up awkwardly, then dropped them. “Not this time, I think,” he said. “Thank you, though.”

“No probs, girl.” Adore nudged him again. “Wanna get some sketchy food and go try on vintage clothes while the sales people stare at us?”

Brian laughed. “ _That’s_ a yes. Hard yes.”

 

*

 

Adore’s apartment was eerily quiet when he got back, her keys cutting into his palm with unfamiliar ridges and jingling an unfamiliar tune. He paused in the threshold, setting down his and Adore’s bags, and looked out at the low sun in the west, the rays cutting golden across the otherwise-dim living room.

He walked in and stood for a moment where the rays just began to touch his face. He hovered his hands over the back of the couch, a bare breath away, then shook his head and went around it, dropping his new book onto the coffee table and sinking down into the cushions.

He meant to do something – read, get his guitar, get his notebook – but instead, he nodded off into the deepest sleep he’d had in weeks.

It was dark when he jostled awake, with just a thin sliver of light glowing from under Adore’s bedroom door. Something near him – on him – was buzzing. Drugged up with the last seconds of his dreams, for a second he wasconvinced it was bugs – and then it buzzed again, in the front left pocket of his jeans, and he remembered his phone.

When he pulled it out, Katya’s name was shining above the green call symbol.

He nearly dropped the phone in his haste to press accept. “Hey,” he said, “hey, hi. Hi stranger.”

“Hey yourself,” Katya said, and Brian could hear the smile in his voice like warm sunlight. “Have you seen my friend Tracy? She vanished into the night and no matter how many Christmas bulbs I tape to my wall I can’t seem to find her.”

“Is that what you’re calling interior decorating now? Bitch, I’ll take the demi-gorgon,” Brian said, and grinned into the dark as Katya cackled delightedly. When he’d settled again, Brian added, “Hey. It’s good to hear your voice.”

“You too. I’ve missed you,” said Katya. He made a dismissive sound, then, and said, “I mean, I know that’s stupid, we’ve gone longer than a week without talking on the phone and much longer without seeing each other, but. I missed you anyway. And all the festering guilt probably made it worse.”

Brian pushed himself up to sitting, pulling his knees in towards his chest and resting his cheek against the back of the couch. “I wouldn’t be telling you anything you don’t already know if I said you don’t need to feel guilty, right?“

“Yeah.”

“You process better out loud. That’s not, like, news to me. And I didn’t…” he trailed off, trying to get his thoughts in order. “I don’t want to take away something that’s good for you, something you use to cope, because it’s not something I like or want for myself. Like how selfish would I have to be – that’s not what I want.” He rubbed at his eyes. “I get the radical honesty thing, you know? It’s just…”

“It’s not how you operate, I know,” Katya said. “And I knew you wouldn’t be mad, although I still think maybe you should be.” He laughed. “So I’ll quit apologizing for periscoping about my, uh, emotional duress. But I _will_ still say sorry for putting that day out there. That was meant to be just ours. So – sorry.”

They were dancing around it, and Brian knew it was for his sake, but he wondered if maybe it was for Katya’s too, a little. “Apology accepted,” he said quietly. He rubbed his thumb along the knuckles of his index finger, feeling out the juts of bone and the softness of skin on skin. “And how goes the emotional duress?”

Katya huffed a laugh. “Oh, you know. Enduring.” Brian rolled his eyes in the dark. Katya seemed to know it because he laughed again, just quiet, intimate beside Brian’s ear. “I’m doing better now,” he said. “It took a few days. It was like I knew _consciously_ that all of this couldn’t be just my doing, that there were all kinds of factors that I may or may not know about, but try telling my crazy brain that.”

“I know,” Brian said, pressing the phone closer to his ear, like that would accomplish literally anything. “I”m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” Katya said. “Just promise me you’ll talk to me when you’re ready.”

“I will, of course I will.”

It felt to Brian like he needed to offer something up, something to bridge the gap of hurt he’d left behind – in both of them – when he left LA at the end of the tracks. But unlike that moment in the bright afternoon sunlight with Adore, here, now, it felt almost easy to find a little piece of himself and hand it over. Because the room was dark, and this was _Katya_.

“We went to Pike Place today,” he said. “Adore and I. It was amazing, you would love it, but – it was the first time I left the house since I got here. Basically the first time I left the guest room.”

Katya made a soft noise.

“My shoulders go up when I’m around a crowd of people. Just _thinking_ about going out for drinks with Adore’s friends tonight made my pulse race. It’s not – I’m not anxious. I’m _pissed_. And… concerned about the consequences of being pissed, because I’m so frustrated and done and so much shit could go wrong – I could lose everything.” He scrubbed a hand roughly over his head. “I can’t stop thinking about it. So maybe anxious isn’t so far off.”

“I wish I were there,” Katya said, his voice a quiet rumble, like morning waves at low tide.

Brian closed his eyes. “I wish you were too.”

They sat in silence for a long moment. Brian’s eyes were starting to slip shut, each blink lasting a little longer, but he could feel the tension in his shoulders still, and he could see the stress dreams coming at him from a mile away. He forced his eyes open and said, “Let’s talk about something else. Just before I go to sleep.”

“Tell me about Pike Place,” Katya said immediately. “Was it amazing?”

“So amazing,” said Brian. “There’s this fucking – _girl_. There’s a fucking magicshop. The woman behind the counter is on first name basis with Adore and she offered to read my palm.”

Katya screamed very quietly on the other end of the line. “See my future with them hands, _bitch_ ,” he crowed, and Brian was laughing, saying, “Bitch, _yes_.”

“Okay, okay, that’s amazing,” Katya said. “Is that where that hag you sent me was?”

“You’d better believe it. Oh! I got you a present.”

“What?” A smile curled through Katya’s voice. “What is it what is it what is it?”

“I found this little book of poems,” Brian said; _“Witches’ Wisdom On Surviving The Apocalypse.”_

“Oh my god, I need it.” There was a pause, and then Katya said, “Read some of it to me?”

“Hang on.” Brian used the dim light of his phone screen to find the book on the coffee table, then to skim through the pages for the lines that had caught his eye before. He lifted his phone back to his ear, angling it awkwardly so the light was enough to read by if he squinted. “Okay. So this one is called, uh, _Battle Plans._ It starts:

 

_We were burning long before you put your pyre under us_

_That’s where the power is_

_Start there._

_But this isn’t work for one –_

_So start there_

_And start with you, and start with me;_

_This is work to be done with love.”_

 

The sound of Katya’s breathing over the line as he read was like a warm blanket; his eyes dipped, shut, blinked open again and again. His words faltered. He picked up the thread once, then again.

His head nodded forward. His phone fell into his lap. At some point, on the other end of the line, Katya ended the call – Brian woke up the next morning to find his screen read “Call Ended - 24m13s” (on what had been, at most, a fifteen minute conversation.)

He looked down at his phone, and he smiled.

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you can take my emojis but you can never take my puns. also i realized i never said, but the title comes from “pancho and lefty” by townes van zandt, which was covered by trixie [here.](https://www.instagram.com/p/BPBs0CbgUP5/)
> 
> this week on honest world: more sadness. more bad jokes. stuff is stressful; brian and adore get high. brian and katya put some feelings on the table.

_FROM: VIOLET - 1:37 AM - Tuesday July 11, 2017_

_Girl they’re just stupid._

_You’re fucking yourself over if you pay it any attention. And fucking you over is MY job._

[Violet, an expert communicator and a complete bitch, had followed this last text up with a winking kissy-face emoji and a dainty hand getting its nails done.]

  _FROM: VIOLET - 9:03 PM - Monday August 10, 2017_

_Where tf are you, you havent been on twitter in like a week and bob says you’re ignoring her texts_

_(girl same tho)_

  _FROM: VIOLET - 9:15 PM - Monday August 10, 2017_

_If you’re dead in a ditch you’ll never win AS3._

  _F_ _ROM: VIOLET - 10:21 PM - Monday August 10, 2017_

_I’m going to start harassing katya if you don’t text me back_

_Trixie!!!_  

[There followed shortly thereafter a string of emojis: a purple devil, a middle finger, an exploding bomb, several exclamation marks, and a single knife.]

 

*

 

“Hi, I’m my own final evolution, Dolly  _Hard-on_.”

“Oh my – oh my god, oh my god, oh my god.”

“You liked that one? You – you –” 

Whatever was said next was high-pitched and completely incomprehensible, lost amid shrieks of laughter. 

“Okay, okay, okay. Whew. Okay. And I’m that deferred childhood dream you think maybe your reflection is living out on the other side of the mirror, Katya!”

“Oh my  _gaaa_  – wait. I never said my name. Fuck! Do we have to re-do it?

“What? No, that was so good, don’t re-do it. I don’t believe in re-dos.”  _[EXCEPT FOR ALL STARS 2]_  flashed across the bottom of the screen. “You need to stop living in the past, Trixie – start living in the future.”

“Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

The title card flashed. Tiny Trixie and tiny Katya spun in a circle holding hands. 

Brian sighed and sunk his chin into his palm. 

“Are you moping?” called Adore from the kitchen. “Stop moping. And turn the volume up, I can’t hear.”

Brian perked up a little. “You watch our show?”

“Every Monday I smoke up and watch it before I go to bed. The weirdest fucking dreams of my life, dude.”

“I’m not sorry. Here,” he said, and turned up the volume. He angled the laptop past him so that Adore, leaning with her elbows up on the counter, could see. 

Ten minutes of sheer delightful idiocy later, he was texting Katya:  _i like us._

Katya sent back a heart.

Adore appeared over his shoulder and dangled a beer in his face, gesturing it towards his laptop. “You guys are so dumb, I love it.”

“Me too,” said Brian, accepting the beer with one hand and opening a new tab with the other. “But you know what I don’t love?  _This_.”

His twitter was a mess. The little bubble above the All Notifications link was in the middling three digits; Mentions was getting up there; and a handful blinked away from the Verified contingent. He opened Mentions first, because he was a masochist, and skimmed through the avalanche of  _OH HONEYs_ and quotes from the latest episode to get to the earlier stuff – the tweets people had been firing off at or about him over the past week he’d been AWOL. 

It was… about what he expected:

-

_@trixiemattel where are you mom_

-

_@trixiemattel it’s been six days since you tweeted, brenda, where are you???_

-

_@trixiemattel come to portland again!!!! pic.twitter.com/hK39f2j_

-

_@trixyalovesmonsoons @trixiemattel yah girl she hasn’t been on twitter or FB for like ages. no one is saying anything either. very suspish._

-

_@pizzamoonlibra @trixiemattel no one??? not even katya?? do u think theyre fighting??_ [There followed a string of emojis, suggesting a crippling fatality had been struck.] _rip me_

-

_@trixyalovesmonsoons @trixiemattel ppl are saying maybe as3????? Idk idk. katya hasnt said anything. Altho did u see THIS pic.twitter.com/398jO23L1_

-

_@pizzamoonlibra @trixiemattel_  [This time there was no text, just a line of extremely suggestive eye emojis.]

-

_I cant believe @trixiemattel is winning all stars 3 as we speak_

-

_@trixiemattel answer us linda!!!!!!!_

-

Same shit, different day, basically. One particular tweet caught his eye, though, and he glanced over his shoulder to see where Adore was – across the room, bouncing on her heels as she waited for the microwave to ding – before opening the picture that had evoked all those side-eye emojis. 

It was a screencap of a facebook post. He read it once, then again, and then closed his eyes and rubbed a knuckle against the ridge of bone under his brow. 

For  _fuck’s_  sake.

“How’s twitter look?” Adore called. 

“Fine,” he said shortly. “The usual.”

Fine, the usual, except for a  _certain fucking drag race queen_  who had apparently posted to facebook sometime yesterday: “ _if you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen. or did all your bookings dry up, sis?_ ”

Brian was so fucking tired.

He navigated back to the main page just as a new tweet appeared from Katya, linking to the latest episode of UNHhhh. That was the reason he’d broken his self-imposed twitter ban in the first place. Katya had written before the link,  _“Discussing alternate universes with my favorite person in this world and the next.”_  Which was nice, and all, but it didn’t manage to quiet the low simmer of anger burning in his stomach. 

Adore appeared at his shoulder again, phone in hand. “My favorite person, huh,” she said, voice sly. 

“Straight from the horse’s mouth,” said Brian. His mouth was very dry. “Well, whore’s. Whore’s mouth.”

“You gonna retweet it?”

There was something careful –  _watchful_  – about Adore’s tone that set Brian’s teeth on edge. He looked back up at that hovering cloud of notifications, and tried to predict how many would be about All Stars, how many would be about that other queen’s post, and how many would be asking him if he didn’t love them anymore since he hadn’t tweeted anything in seven – count ‘em,  _seven_  – days. And how much higher that notification count would climb when he retweeted the new episode, like he did every week. 

“No, fuck that,” he said, shutting his laptop on the coffee table and pushing himself off the couch, leaving his phone behind as well. “Fuck this.”

He retreated into his room, where, no matter how tempted he might be, he couldn’t delete his twitter account and disappear from the face of the human earth entirely. He sat on the bed, hands fisted against the sheets – and then the anger faded, and he was just. Tired. Drained all the way to empty, so his shoulders had to curl in and his spine had to slouch around the hollow place inside of him. He felt like – barely even a person, just a body, with a brain somewhere higher up pushing molasses-slow from thought to thought. 

His hands un-fisted. He wished he’d brought his phone in with him so he could text Katya, but he didn’t even know what he would say. 

He lay down on his back and stared up at the ceiling. A short while later he heard footsteps approach his door. They paused, for a minute; then they went away again. 

 

*

 

The first thing he said when he saw Adore the next morning was, “I made breakfast.” And then, flushing red like an  _idiot_ , “I’m sorry. About last night.”

“You’re saying too many things for seven in the morning,” said Adore, staring at him from her bedroom doorway like he may or may not be a hallucination. Which made sense, since he’d basically ambushed her the moment her door opened. That was his bad.

“It’s definitely nine,” said Brian, and then, twitching the spatula a few times distractedly, “I  _am_  sorry. I’m really, really embarrassed about walking out like that. That’s not – that’s not how I like to do things.”

“Really? I do shit like that all the time,” Adore said. She yawned, then sniffed. “Is that french toast? Holy crap, dude.”

Brian loaded up a plate and set it on the table as she shuffled over. “Walking out without an explanation, when it wasn’t even you I was mad at? That’s fucked up. I don’t play shit like that.” He grabbed the maple syrup from the fridge. “ _Usually_  I don’t, I guess. But I’ve been acting like a crazy person anyway so why not, right?”

Adore blinked up at him with sleepy eyes as he brought his own plate and the syrup over, slumping down into the chair across from hers. “If you’re not mad at me, who’re you mad at?” she said finally. When Brian didn’t respond right away, she added, “Is it Katya?”

Brian nearly choked on his mouthful. “What? No.”

“‘Cause we were talking about her tweet when you…”

“No, not even a little bit. Katya and I –” Brian trailed off. “It’s complicated, but not like that. And what’s complicated isn’t even her fault. Or my fault, or anyone’s, really.”

He wasn’t making any sense. 

Adore chewed thoughtfully. “Sounds like a hot mess.”

“ _Girl_. You don’t even know.”

Adore took another bite, nodding. Brian watched her for a second, waiting to see if she had something else to say, but when she didn’t look up he looked away. It was bright outside, wispy white clouds barely blocking out the summer blue. They drifted lazily across the sky, broken only by a flock of crows in the distance, swooping at wide, pinwheeling angles. It was all sedate and beautiful, and here  _he_  was, rattling away on the inside like a rollercoaster with a few essential screws loose. 

Adore popped the last bit of her french toast into her mouth. “You wanna get high and talk it out?” she said. 

Brian stared at her. 

She swallowed and shrugged. “I dunno. It works for me.”

Well, fuck. 

“Okay,” he said. “What the fuck, why not.”

 

*

 

Adore cackled as Brian wheezed through his first hit. “Oh my god I hate this,” he coughed. “Mother _fucker._ ”

“This is so sad,” said Adore gleefully. 

Brian downed the glass of water she handed him. “Some of us have to preserve our fucking vocal chords, bitch – we can’t all smoke for years and then sing like the second coming of  _Freddie Mercury_. Some of us are the Brian Mays of the world and we just have to live with that.”

“Don’t stop me now, baby,” Adore drawled, tumbling over the back of the couch so her head was beside his knees, the wig she’d put on pulled crooked. “You having a good time yet, Trixie?”

Brian rolled his eyes. “Girl. There’s no way it’s hit you already.”

When it did hit, it was slow, like a warm tide creeping up the sand. First, it was Brian’s shoulders loosening; then he realized his eyes were heavy, so he shut them; and when he opened them again, Adore was smiling at him, and he realized he was smiling back. 

“You having a real good time?” she said again. Then she said his name, feeling out each syllable like there was something to be discovered between the consonants and breaks: “Trixie Mattel. Your world turned inside out and shit?”

He ran the tip of his tongue over the sharp edges of his teeth; he could feel every crinkle in the skin at the corner of his eyes when he grinned. “Getting there.” She passed him the joint and he took another hit, smoother this time. “It’s funny,” he said, “the name thing.”

“Mm?”

She was still upside down. 

“I never really know what to say when people ask which name to use. Is it a distancing thing if I say Trixie? Is it a distancing thing if I say  _Brian?_ ” He made a face. “Maybe I want you to be distant, Linda. As in far away. Like faaar away – let’s cross some state lines, here. You know?”

Adore tipped her legs up and over, tumbling sideways in a drunken somersault until she was lying length-wise on the couch, peering up at him. “Does it matter? It doesn’t to me. It’s your business, dude.” 

She wasn’t getting it. “It  _does_. There’s all these little details that people jump on like if they can decipher it they’ll  _know_  me – and I get sucked into it too. Overthinking everything.” He brought the joint to his mouth again. Then he added, “That’s what I like about Katya – it was never even a question. Do you know what I mean? We couldn’t go around calling each other Brian, so it just… never mattered. But that’s just how she _is_ , too.”

“I’m glad you’re not mad at Katya,” said Adore. “You guys seem so good.”

Brian looked down at his hands, the corners of his mouth tugging up helplessly. “She’s the best. I mean, she smells weird, but. The best.” 

“That’s why it’s strange to me that you’re here, and she’s not.”

It wasn’t even noon; the late morning sunlight cut through the room and lit in the green of Adore’s eyes and the shadows under them. She looked years younger than him – except in the eyes. 

“I’m not gonna push you, homie,” she said. “You don’t have to tell anyone anything if you don’t want to, and I’ll fucking fight anyone who says otherwise. But if you  _do_  want to talk… I’m here. And who am I gonna tell, right?”

She gestured widely at the empty expanse of the room – or maybe, of Seattle itself. 

Brian tilted his head back to look up at the ceiling. Adore took the joint out of his hand, but she said nothing, waiting. 

After a minute, he sighed, giving in, and said, “I wasn’t expecting it to be like this, and I’m mad at myself for not seeing it coming.”

“What’s ‘it’?” said Adore. “What’s ‘like this’?”

It was his turn to wave his hand vaguely at the space. It felt like something in his chest was opening; like his ribs had spread like closet doors, and now the words came tumbling out like poorly-stacked clothes. “Drag Race. Everything that came after. I walked off that show feeling like the world’s biggest fucking idiot for going in expecting anything other than what I got – feeling like I should have  _known_. And now it’s like I’ve done that all over again. I went out to make a name for myself, and now that I have, all I want to do is take it back.”

Adore hummed. “The fans?”

“ _Everything_. The fucking – the schedule, the expectations, the entitlement. God, the fucking high school  _bullshit_  backstage.” He could feel his pulse picking up again at the crook of his neck, a thudding drumbeat that seemed to fill his whole head; he reached for the joint and Adore passed it back. He inhaled deeply, held it, then let the smoke slip out in a grey stream, floating towards the ceiling. It was funny – the things that muscle memory held onto. 

He coughed once, then continued. “Like, I could work at Forever 21, and I’d deal with the same amount of bullshit all day from customers and coworkers. That’s any job. But you’re not expected to feel like your douchebag coworkers are your  _family_. They’re not supposed to be the only people you have in your life. That’s fucked up.”

He wasn’t expecting Adore to get it, really, because she was  _Adore_. Even the people who didn’t like what she did still seemed to like  _her_  – she was good at that. At people. But when he looked down, her face was thoughtful, and she nodded slowly. “Yeah,” she said. “And when they’re the only people in your life, when things go wrong, it gets…”

“Complicated,” he agreed.

She ran a finger along the seam of the couch, where the fabric puckered, then laughed. “They’d hate you at Forever 21.”

“Really? Yeah. But I think I could manage a fake smile if I was getting grabbed less.” He sighed and slumped back further into the cushions. “My life is going off the fucking rails.”

“Oh, come on. It’s not all that.”

Brian laughed. “Girl, I’ve been sleeping in your guest room for a week. I’ve left the house  _three times_.”

“Okay, yeah, maybe.” Adore ran a hand through her long, tangled hair. “So what can you do about it? Not, like, now. But what needs to be done so that it isn’t like that anymore?”

“Fuck if I know.” He sighed, then said, louder, frustration creeping into his voice, “I know I’m being vague and it’s not helping you or me or anyone understand what’s going on here, but the honest to god truth is that I just  _can’t_. There’s too much of it, and I don’t even know where to begin. I feel like if I start talking I’ll never be able to stop.”

“Hey,” said Adore, “hey, it’s okay. It’s fine, dude. I have shit I’m not talking about either.”

“Yeah.” He pulled his feet up and crossed them under him, tucking his hands under his calves. The flannel of his pyjama pants was soft under his fingers, and he ran his thumb across it, feeling the impressions of the little fabric pills against his skin. He did it a few more times, until his throat felt less tight. Then he said, “What makes it hard is that it’s my fault. Where I am right now, that’s entirely on me, so when I complain I just feel like an asshole pointing fingers to shift the blame.”

Adore hummed. “You’ve said that a couple times. How’s it your fault, exactly?”

Brian was quiet for a moment, trying to organize his thoughts, which slipped away from his clumsy fingers. Adore sat up to roll another joint on the coffee table. He watched her for a moment, the confident surety of her hands as she worked, then looked out past her to the glass doors, where Seattle was alive and bustling, completely untouched by the dumb melodrama of his life. He wanted to be like that – untouched, uncaring, totally above the bullshit the world threw at him.

_That_ , that’s how he used to be. He wasn’t sure when it had changed.

Adore the lit the joint and passed it to him; he inhaled, long and slow, and let the warmth fill his lungs and press against his lips until he had to release it. 

“I came out of Drag Race with a chip on my shoulder,” he said, the words coming out with a slow gravity, like stones sinking into deep water.  “I didn’t freeze up – if I stopped, if I stood still, I would have had to  _think_  about it. So I strategized and planned and made lists, I wrote down every little thing I had fucked up on the show and how to redeem it in public, I fucking – I ran myself ragged but I made it  _work_.”

Adore was silent. He could see her watching him out of the corner of his eye, but it didn’t – it didn’t have any effect on him, that knowledge. He didn’t feel any particular way about it. It didn’t register. It didn’t seem quite real. 

There had been a counsellor in high school once who wanted to talk to him about something called dissociation. Probably he was just very, very stoned, though. 

“And it’s like, I know all the right steps, here, I know how to put on a show and advertise and build a fanbase and maintain a working relationship with the people in my industry but I fucking –” he cut himself off;  _I fucking hate it, I feel like I don’t even belong to myself, I stand there and it’s like everything inside me is about to fucking eject from my body because I hate it so much._

He couldn’t say it because it wasn’t true, not entirely. He  _didn’t_  hate it. He didn’t think he did, anyway. Not all the time. Not all of it. 

He took another hit.

“Is it worth it?”

He looked over at Adore, squinting up at him, and started to laugh. After a second, she joined in. 

“Who the fuck knows,” he managed after a few attempts, breathless and shaking with it. 

It wasn’t funny – but in his experience, the funniest things are the ones that aren’t really funny at all. 

When they calmed down, Adore flipped over onto her back, lifting her legs straight up to the ceiling and then curling them in towards her chest, hugging her knees. She reached backwards to grab the joint from him and took a drag; her exhale came in small bursts of grey, still giggling a little. 

“ _Who the fuck knows_ is, like, my life philosophy right now. No one knows anything, and if we all stopped pretending we did, we’d be a lot happier and more at peace with ourselves.”

Brian made a face. “I think  _some_  people know some things.”

“Bianca,” Adore said sternly. “Bianca and literally no one else. That’s just true.”

He laughed. “When you’re right, you’re right.”

“Listen,” said Adore, sitting up suddenly to face him. “This whole thing is stupid. This whole business is  _stupid_. People talk shit about you behind your back and smile where you can see, they fuck with your credibility and smile and smile and you’re just expected to, like, carry on? Fuck that shit. It’s  _stupid_.”

“ _So_  stupid.” Brian tipped his head back to look at the ceiling; in some small corner of his brain, he remembered it: the show at Mickey’s, and backstage after. What he’d heard in the hall. “But what’s the alternative?”

“Fucked if I know.” Smoke floated up in his peripheral vision, cutting through dust motes floating in the sunlight. “Hey, at least you got one good thing out of Drag Race.”

Brian tilted his head to the side to eye her. “ _What_ ,” he said. 

She gave him a look. 

“Oh. Yeah, duh.” He rolled his eyes, but felt his cheeks go warm. 

“Girl.”

“ _Ohmygod_ , you said you weren’t gonna push.”

“I wasn’t gonna push about  _depressing_ shit. I’m not a demon. But Trixie, I swear to God, when I saw you in November I thought you guys were boning  _down_.”

“Oh my god,” Brian said again. He’d started to laugh again, helplessly, covering his mouth with one hand. 

“I did! When we were, like, out, and drunk, and you got a call from her? You lit up like a fucking Christmas tree, dude. It was  _not_  subtle.”

Brian was fully lightheaded from laughing – dumb, high-pitched giggles, and he couldn’t stop, It was hitting him hard – god, he was stoned as  _fuck_. “We weren’t,” he managed. “Literally, I swear to god, we weren’t.”

Adore grinned, too knowing. “ _But_?”

“Okay, one, you don’t know me,” Brian said, furrowing his brow and aiming for irritated even though his voice kept breaking with laughter. “Two, you don’t know my life. Three, shut up.”

He remembered that night. Adore had come to his show in this shitty little black box theatre and the pipes for the shower in the green room had broken down, so they’d walked back to his hotel at two in the morning, smashed drunk and still in full drag head to toe. The streets had been dark and anonymous, the city a maze in his mind, but Adore – who had only been living there for a month – navigated the corners like she’d been there forever. Halfway back, his phone had buzzed. He’d scrambled for it in his duffle bag, and he remembered – that feeling, seeing Katya’s name in green, and the sound of her voice, how it had lit up the unfamiliar dark. Adore had laughed at him, he remembered, and Katya had shouted  _HI_  to her so loud he’d had to clap a hand over his ear.

“Listen,” he said, snapping back to the present and snatching the joint back from Adore. “I may not be happy, fulfilled, or in the kind of mutually supportive relationship I deserve, let alone literally any relationship at all, but at least I’m not. You know. Poor.”

Adore barked a laugh. “Same. Theoretically.”

He passed her the joint, since – all things and lawsuits considered – she needed it. “ _Girl_.”

“But you would, right?”

He looked at her; she pursed her lips around the joint, quirking her eyebrows significantly again. Another  _look_.

“Don’t give me that. Would what?”

She exhaled and rolled her eyes. “You and Katya. A – what did you call it? – mutually supportive relationship. Would you?”

“Her booking fee is higher than mine, she would definitely be the one doing the supporting,” Brian said, but his mouth was dry, and he knew it wasn’t just the weed. 

Adore didn’t let it go, staring down at him where she knelt with the joint half-raised, like she’d forgotten she even had it. “ _Trixie_.”

He swallowed; touched his knuckle to the corner of his mouth and looked away. “I –”

His phone started to ring. 

“I gotta get that,” he said, and then, when he’d managed to extract it from between the pillows, flashed the screen at Adore – Facetime request. 

“Speak of the devil,” said Adore, grinning delightedly, to which he replied, “And she appears, penis erect. Hey,” he said, pressing  _accept_ and holding the phone up in front of him, “you have five minutes, motherfucker.”

Adore swayed over his shoulder, so half her face was on screen. “Show us your erect penis, motherfucker!”

“Oh my god,” Brian said as Katya burst out laughing. Suddenly the view went unnaturally still, the phone propped up somewhere, and Katya was standing up in his living room, his stomach and hips filling the screen, he was fumbling with his fly – “Don’t you dare!” Brian shouted. “Don’t you dare, you putrid whore.”

“ _Putrid_?” Katya said, dropping back into his seat and into frame. “Talk dirty to me, Tracy.”

Adore, collapsed against Brian’s shoulder, started humming the saxophone intro, her ribs buzzing against him. It was somehow the funniest fucking thing that had happened to him yet; he started giggling uncontrollably, stuttering, “stop, stop,” in a voice that broke on every other syllable. 

Katya’s gaze flicked between them. “Someone’s having a good time,” he said, smiling but bemused. 

Adore switched into the familiar notes of “Don’t Stop Me Now.” Brian went fully silent, shaking, tears springing to his eyes. 

“Oh my god,” said Katya, realization dawning in his voice. “Trixie, you’re so fucking high.”

“I, I, I,” Brian managed, and then he was laughing again, wheezing. “I swear it wasn’t this bad just a minute ago. Why do you have the worst timing?!”

“I ask myself that daily,” said Katya.

Adore pulled herself higher onto Brian’s shoulder and waved at the screen. “Hey bae,” she said. “How’s it hanging?”

“Pendulous and only semi-erect, unfortunately,” Katya replied, grinning brightly at her. “How are you, girl?”

“Stoned as shit. Corrupting poor Trixie here. Didn’t anyone tell her I’m a bad influence?”

“Well, it’s  _about_  time someone did. Tracy, are you being influenced?”

Brian, who had mostly managed to calm down, scowled at both of them. “I am a grown adult woman and I’m making my own decisions here, thanks.”

“And what decisions are those?” said Adore, voice innocently high, to which he had to respond, equally high and overly girlish, “Umm, expanding my horizons, meeting new people, and only putting natural products into my body,” which pulled a scream of laughter from Katya.

“This is my favorite thing that has ever happened,” Katya said. “Adore, you are a witch and a wizard and a miracle-worker all at once. I’m calling the Vatican the minute I get off the phone with you girls.”

“I’m a fucking  _bruja_ , bitch.” Adore’s head lolled across Brian’s shoulder, the pointy ends of her bobby pins digging into him uncomfortably. “Come to Seattle, bae, I’ll read your tarot cards.”

Some cool whisper of reason snuck back into Brian’s head. He looked up with clearer eyes to meet Katya’s gaze through the screen.

“Things are crazy right now but I will when I can, for sure,” Katya said, his tone careless. He looked from Brian to Adore. “It’d be great to see you. It was so nice to catch up at Dragcon.”

Brian felt Adore go still. “Totally, yeah,” she said, and now  _she_  was the one being careful.

It occurred to Brian all of a sudden that everyone he knew was a fucking mess. 

Well, obviously. He knew that already. But it really came down on him then: the whole snarl of it, of all of them. Dancing around their respective bruises and trying not to land down too hard in case they stumbled into something soft.

This all seemed to catch up to Katya too, because his mouth pursed a little with concern. “It was total fucking murder, though, too. Especially given – everything. How’re you holding up, girl?”

In the small square that reflected their faces, Brian saw Adore look away, then back, and make a silly face and shrug. “This is where I say  _party_ , right?”

“No, sorry, that’s mine now actually,” said Katya, and Adore chuckled, the sound rumbling through Brian’s side. The tension broke. Brian thought he might be the only one in the call to catch the hint of relief at the corners of Katya’s smile.

“Stop being such a fucking klepto, Barbara,” he said. “I thought you’d left that behind you.”

“Behind me? So it could sneak in my back door when I wasn’t looking? No way, mama. I keep that shit locked tight in the metaphorical front yard, where I can see it.”

Brian gasped and then burst out laughing. “Backdoored by your own bad behaviour!  _Ahh_!”

“That’s why they call it a fuck up,” added Adore, giggling again. “Because you keep – keep fucking yourself over.”

“I want no part of this hysteria, slander, and character assassination,” Katya said, grinning so wide it looked like he might give himself a hernia with it. “I keep my flaws in full sight and let them out to play under strictly supervised conditions. It’s called harm reduction, you uneducated –“

“—unwashed,” interrupted Adore,

“—unimpressed,” added Brian, straight-faced,

“— _cuntmunchers_ ,” said Katya.

Brian went fully non-verbal with laughter.

“If everyone knew how stupid you both were, they’d never pay to go to your shows ever again,” said Adore, who had fallen completely out of frame and was collapsed half on the couch, half on the ground, one hand clutching her stomach and her eyes all squinty with glee.

“Oh, they know,” Katya said. “You’re looking at the two-time losers, full-time lesbians of Rupaul’s Drag Race. Stupid is our five-letter manifesto. Marx and Engels were too long-winded; change for our nation won’t come from anything longer than your average tweet thread.”

“Are  _you_  high?” said Adore, to which Brian replied, “No, that’s just her,” and Katya said, “Yeah, a little.”

Brian’s mouth snapped shut and he shot him a look. Katya rolled his eyes. “Pot,  _mom_.”

“Blaze it, bitch,” said Adore, lifting the stubby remains of their second joint in a toast that Katya couldn’t see, then she twitched, twice. She started to paw at herself. “My phone is buzzing.”

“You stuck it in your bra, girl,” Brian said, and a second later she raised it and waggled it at him, triumphant.

It buzzed one more time, then started ringing.

“ _Fuuuuck_ ,” groaned Adore – until she got a look at the screen, and then her face brightened instantly. “Oh shit, nah, I’m taking this, bye,” she said, and then she was off the floor and out the balcony doors like a shot. She had the presence of mind to shut them behind her; Brian couldn’t hear whatever it was she said in greeting, but he could see the light in her eyes and the instant, easy curve of her smile, the softness in the corners there.

“What just happened?” said Katya, laughing. Brian looked back at him – mussed blonde hair standing up at weird angles, stupid half-shaved brows, and that bright, familiar grin – and felt his own smile go soft, too.

“Who knows,” he said. “Hey. I missed your face.”

“I missed yours too,” said Katya, his gaze flickering across the screen, like he was taking all of Brian in piece by piece. “You look good. You look like you’ve been sleeping.”

“Amazing, right?” Brian laughed. He felt all warm inside. “You’re so smart. Facetime-ing was so smart. What would we do if you hadn’t gone to college and gotten smart?”

“Well, I’d be living on the street, and you’d have won All Stars 2,” said Katya. The camera shook and moved, and then the ugly tartan of his couch came into view as he settled down on his back. “Two questions for you: how stoned are you on a scale of one to ten, and how long has it been since you smoked  _the pot_ , Trixie Mattel?”

“Smoked the pot at the padge,” Brian said, because it sounded funny, then added, “It’s been at least ten years, and – maybe a six? We were a full eight for a second there, but my body’s too old and frail to keep that up for longer than a minute.”

“Wait ‘til you turn thirty, that’ll be your  _dick_.”

“Girl.” Brian made a horrified face so Katya would laugh. Then he looked past his phone out to the balcony, where Adore was. She’d slid down to sit, back to the railing, phone held to her ear with that same private smile. It seemed like she’d forgotten he was there at all. “Hang on,” he said to Katya. “I’m relocating.”

“Roger,” said Katya. “Michael, George, James, Dimitri –“

Brian rolled his eyes as he made his way across the living room. “Nope, bye –“

Katya laughed. “Don’t hang up! Don’t hang up don’t hang up.”

“Ugh.” He shut the guest room door behind himself and threw himself down on the bed. The way his body bounced made his fingers tingle, floaty. “Hey Katya?”

“Yeah?”

“I feel like gravity has given up on me a little. Is that normal?”

“You’re asking  _me_  about normal?”

Brian rolled his eyes. “Okay, one person in this call is a drug addict, and one isn’t. Who would you rather I ask?”

“How exactly would you go about asking yourself?” said Katya pensively. “I would rather that. I’d like to see how that would work.”

“Oh, go fuck yourself.”

“Right now? With you on the line?” He made a weird, aroused purring noise.

Brian laughed, pressing his skull back against the bed. His eyes closed and his hand, holding the phone, dropped back to the sheets. “I hate you so much.”

“No you don’t,” came Katya’s voice from down near his side. Brian could hear his smile, easy as anything.

“No, I guess not.” Brian brought his free hand up to his stomach; his fingers splayed across the thin fabric of his tanktop, then burrowed under, rucking it up so he could touch skin. There was a moment of silence, then he said, “Adore and I. We talked about it.”

“Mm?”

“About last fall.” 

Katya was quiet.

Brian traced a circle against his own hip, thinking. “That was a weird time. Like, I knew what I wanted – or I’d always known, but I was just now admitting it to myself – and you were  _there_ , and I – I wanted –”

He cut himself off.

On the other end of the line, Katya exhaled slowly. “What did you want?”

His voice was low, raspy with smoke; Brian felt himself shiver. “You know what I wanted. You knew then, too.”

“Tell me anyway,” Katya said, and Brian could hear the warm laughter tucked behind the words.

All the gravity Brian’s body couldn’t feel was suddenly gathering in his chest, physical awareness returning only – it seemed – to the spaces between his sternum and his heart, his heart and his spine. Just that one area. He pressed his fingers harder against his stomach.

“I wanted to be with you,” he said.

There was silence from the other end of the line. He waited a moment, then flexed his fingers around his phone – reminding himself they were there, they existed – and lifted it up over his head so he could see.

Katya’s eyes were very wide, and his cheeks were very thin, and his mouth was crooked, like he was biting at the inside of his lip.

“Don’t make that face,” Brian said, automatically chiding. “I’m not, like, reshaping your world here. We both knew.”

Katya laughed; it came out hoarse, a little breathless. “Yeah. Yeah,” he said. “But it’s still nice to hear it said out loud. We haven’t, really, since…” 

“Yeah,” Brian echoed, reading the rest of that sentence in Katya’s face.

They’d had one real conversation about it. Three years of dumb jokes, overly sincere ironies, booking two rooms on tour and then falling asleep in each other’s beds by accident. That’s not a ratio that says much for their emotional intelligence or communication skills. Brian used to think he was good at those things, but there’s something about Katya that’s made him dumb since the beginning. (Or maybe, when it’s the two of them, he just – got used to needing those things less. One look, it seemed, and they  _knew_.)

One real conversation. It was that fall, when they were living in the same place for the first time ever, getting coffee, brunch, going to Willam’s art nights glued to each other’s sides and laughing themselves sick. There was one night when Katya had decided to paint – he’d had Brian pose like an idiot in this  _structure_  they’d made, pink tubes and black fringe and empty bottles and Hamburger Mary’s napkins.  _Oh, this is drag, honey,_  Brian had said, fully boy in his flannel and jeans, reclining like a supermodel.  _It is! But it is though!_  Katya had called from behind his easel;  _the bars we get fucked at, and the mid-size family restaurants where we earn dollar bills from straight people. Yes gawd!_

Brian had been just off a week straight of different cities and he’d dozed off after twenty minutes or so. When he’d woken, more than an hour later, there was a bundle of fringe under his head and a piece of paper on the ground in front of him that said SMOKE BREAK BRB. He’d extracted himself from their masterpiece and made his sleepy way over to the easel. What he saw there drew him up short. 

His own face at rest, slack and unlined, eyes shut. His lashes –  _Katya made them longer,_  he thought,  _they’re not that long in real life_  – dark and feathering against his cheekbones. Blue flannel falling open over his shoulders, revealing the divot at the base of his throat, one notch of collarbone. All this in thick oil paint; he could make out pencil marks faintly at the edges, marking a first, earlier attempt at the chaos of their structure before he’d fallen asleep under it. 

He’d looked up, then, and Katya had been there, in the doorway, a furry lavender coat pulled over his Marlboro t-shirt against the chill. And Katya hadn’t said anything. He’d just stood, waiting – waiting to see how Brian would react.

Brian had touched his fingers to the corner of his mouth, then smiled crookedly.  _We’re gonna have a hard time smuggling this out,_  he’d said, nodding at the breadth of the canvas, and Katya had laughed.  _Let them see,_  he’d said.  _Art is meant to be seen._

That night, Brian had crashed at Katya’s, and he’d lain in Katya’s bed, and he’d fallen asleep with Katya’s head pillowed on his shoulder, his own face turned in, mouth slack against Katya’s temple. 

They hadn’t talked the next day. But the next week – one real conversation. And there had been so many things Brian had wanted to say, too many, and in the end what came out was measured, rational, and wholly different from the dust devil beating chaos inside of him. And in the end, what came out was,  _we can’t._

It wasn’t miserable. It wasn’t the  _end_. They’d still done all of the things that they used to. But – yeah. It’d been different. 

“I wanted to  _be_  with you,” Brian said again, and when Katya exhaled a little unevenly, added, “I wanted to tell you that, and I wanted to hold your hand, and go out, and…”

“And?”

He fought back a smile, looking down, then up through his lashes. “And stay in.”

Katya’s eyes widened again, and then the corners of his mouth crept up, he was grinning just a little, they were grinning at each other like idiots.

“You should tell me more about that, Tracy,” he said, “spare no detail,” and Brian laughed, pressing his fingertips harder against his stomach. He wanted to really  _feel_  them, all the way through the warm glow that was filling his body.

“You know me better than that,” he said, although he could feel that familiar curling feeling low in his gut, the one that made his hips want to shift, made his dick stir against the soft fabric of his pajama pants. He blinked up at Katya, lazy. “I don’t talk dirty until the fifth date.”

“Oh, we have –  _easily_  – hit five dates by now,” Katya argued, but he hummed a negative, smiling and obnoxious, like  _nn-nhhh._

“We’re not counting you dragging me to Jacques on our one day off. Or me dragging you to Berlin. Or –”

“Palm Springs, bitch! That’s five in one!”

“You get  _one_  for Palm Springs. The other four are deducted for making me listen to you palm spring yourself in the next room every night for a week.”

The camera shook and pixelated as Katya laughed, and Brian grinned, the stupid one, where all his hick teeth were on full display and his eyes crinkled even smaller and he knew it was terrible but he couldn’t help it, okay, he fucking couldn’t. When Katya settled down he was still smiling like that, and then there they were again, smiling at each other like a couple of concussed idiots. And that was sort of how Brian felt – concussed. Stoned, and also concussed. Completely and forcibly overwhelmed with how  _big_  everything he felt for Katya was, how much he missed him, how incredibly fucking grateful he was to have him in his life. 

Katya looked down for a moment, then made a thoughtful noise. “You know, that day on the pier – that was a date, to me.”

Brian swallowed.

“It was to me, too,” he said.

Katya wrapped an arm across his own chest, his palm curling over his collarbone, fingers over his shoulder.

Looking at him like that made Brian’s heart  _hurt_. “I wish you were here,” he said. 

“I could be,” Katya said, voice soft. 

Brian couldn’t bring himself to say no, so he said nothing. Katya watched him with an expression on his face that Brian could only call  _tender_ ; Brian flushed, and frowned at himself, and the corners of Katya’s mouth twitched up. 

When Katya gently changed the subject, Brian let him, rolling over on his side and propping his phone up against the book he’d abandoned the night before. He tucked his hand under his face so his knuckles were pressed up against his cheekbone. In the low high he still had going, he could almost pretend the feeling of skin on skin was more than what it was. 

Was that all he’d been doing, these past three years?

The reasons hadn’t changed. He wasn’t sure if they could; what he would need to do; what he would have to give up.

 

*

 

That evening, when the high was gone and Adore was out on the balcony again livestreaming, he opened his notebook to a new, blank page. The apartment was quiet. It didn’t feel like the stillness of paralysis; it was more like the tranquility of a forest road at night, with that visceral sense of living things resting and growing. 

That was how Brian felt. Something inside of him was turning over, like an animal in sleep, chasing down paths in the subconscious that would only become visible to the waking mind at some later point. 

Maybe he was still a little high. Adore had lit up another joint after dinner, and what was he going to say to that,  _no?_

He stretched for the pen on his bedside table, then wrote at the head of the page: PROS and CONS, divided by a stark black line. 

The bare space of the page taunted him. 

Fuck. He dropped his pen and rolled over onto his back, scrubbing a hand over his eyes. Whatever it was that his brain was working out, it was doing it on its  _own_  goddamn time, and the rest of him was in some hell limbo where he got all of the nerves of a decision and none of the pay-off. It was just this constant, restless anxiety. 

His phone began to buzz somewhere near his hip. He fumbled for it blindly, then lifted it to his face, opening his eyes. 

_FROM: KATYA - 8:37 PM - Tuesday August 8th, 2017_

_don’t forget i paid for u at olive garden during the s7 tour when u forgot ur wallet on the bus. that’s a date. game on bitch._

Brian grinned up at his phone, then typed and sent,

_dont forget i had to listen to u come olive-r yourself that whole tour. subtract another four bitch._

_FROM: KATYA - 8:38 PM - Tuesday August 8th, 2017_

_OLIVE-R ALL OVER AHHHHH_

A line of kissy-face emojis. 

_Plane about to take off, delta doesnt support our love smh_

_Ttyl,_ followed by still more kiss emojis. 

Brian sent back a string of hearts, then dropped his phone to the side. He stared up at the ceiling for a second; the corners of his smile slipped, and he turned his head to the side to look out the window at the deepening indigo of the Seattle night. 

There was a strain of melody tugging at his fingers. He dragged himself up and got his guitar from the corner, then sat on the end of the bed, feet bare against the cool floor. He plucked out a few notes. A few more. 

The beginnings of a song came together, filling the hollow space of the room. It sounded, he thought, like the gentle rustling of the ocean on a calm night, or maybe of wind outside a train window. Or bedsheets, tangled around two pairs of feet, in the early hours of the morning. 

 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> can yall believe how long this garbage is. finally earning that E rating though!
> 
> this week on honest world: brian has found himself a new normal; adore prepares to host a pageant for seattle’s local weirdos. brian and katya make things uncomfortable for whichever NSA agent is listening in on their conversations.

 

_FROM: TRANNIKA - 2:14 PM - Tuesday August 19th, 2017_

_shea is on tour with your girl, she says she’s on her phone constantly so it’s either you or her dealer I figure_

_Idk what’s going on but you know I have your back bbgirl_

_(unless we’re spooning. Im the little spoon.)_

_anyway I’ve said it like 5 times now but I’m here to listen if you want to talk. follow dad’s example and keep making terrible choices, it’s worked out great for me_

 

*

 

“I’m so fucking horny right now.”

“Who you tellin’?” Brian, bent over his suitcase, shot a glare over his shoulder at the phone on the bed. “Everyone in Seattle is white, pasty, and probably anemic. It’s terrible, you’d fit right in.”

“Not your type, huh?”

There was a coy lilt in Katya’s voice that had been showing up more and more all week. Brian ducked his head and smiled. “You’re what they call the exception that proves the rule,” he said.

Katya made a high-pitched, intrigued sound, the kind he made when he thought he was giving a little Catwoman. “Because I’m exceptional?”

“Because I have stockholm syndrome. I’m from Milwaukee – I am genetically predisposed to thirsting after crazies. That’s just true.”

Katya purred over the line.

“God, I hate you,” Brian said. He tugged a pair of jeans and a shirt out of his bag and contemplated them. “How long has it been?”

“Hmm?”

Brian pressed a hand to the smooth bare skin of his stomach and smirked. “Since you last fucked anyone.”

The phone went staticky as Katya spluttered too close to the mic, and then there was a more distant sound of coughing, like he’d turned his face away, showing some manners for once in his life. Brian laughed.

“Shut up, you cunt,” Katya rasped, then, clearer, “I almost swallowed my cigarette. _Tracy_.”

“You always get so scandalized when I’m the one to bring up sex,” said Brian, amused.

“Scandalized is one word you could use for it.” Katya sounded flustered; Brian covered his mouth with one hand, like someone might catch his grin in the empty room. Katya hissed a breath through his teeth. “You really wanna know?”

“No, I just said it because I’ve missed the sound of your rheumatic hacking.” Katya laughed faintly on the other end of the line. Scratching his fingers against the short hair above his briefs, Brian turned back to the bed, then stretched out on his stomach beside the phone. “Yeah,” he said; he heard his own voice go lower. “Come on, tell me.”

“Uh,” Katya said, stalling; there was a sliding sound – the glass doors of his hotel balcony – and then the creak of bedsprings. He clicked his tongue. “Two months, give or take? It’s not like I keep a _sex log_. Although – mama, now that I’ve thought of it, I might start.”

“There’s no shame in getting a penis pump, girl,” Brian said. “It’ll take you from a twig to a log in no time.”

Katya howled with outrage, laughing. “ _You_! You are the worst person I’ve ever met!”

“Just looking out for you, like a good friend should.”

“Oh god. Is it weird that I got a little hard when you said ‘penis pump’? Fuck.” Katya panted for a moment, then blew out a noisy breath. “Well, what about you, Nancy Drew? How long’s it been for _you_?”

He said it like a challenge, but Brian just smiled easily. “Six months, give or take.”

“You’re a nun, Tracy,” Katya said. He sounded steadier than he had a moment ago – which was a challenge in and of itself, in Brian’s opinion, so he replied, “Well, if you know any nuns with hands as dexterous as mine –”

Katya made another choking sound. “Oh my god, oh my god.”

And that was shock, not – anything else, but all the same Brian felt his dick stir, taking an interest in the proceedings. He pressed his hips into the mattress, exhaling slowly. “Is this making you uncomfortable?” he said, blandly curious.

“That was a, a stunning display of blasphemy, Tracy. I am – I am _stunned_.”

He knew that tone in Katya’s voice. He wet his lips, picturing it – Katya, flat on his back, phone held to his ear with one hand and the other drifting unconsciously lower. With that wide-eyed look he got any time Brian threw him off-balance.

Brian chuckled under his breath and said. “Listen, Katya, we all have bad habits. Nuns included.”

There was a moment of silence – Brian waited – and then Katya screamed.

Brian burst out laughing.

“You cunt!” Katya shrieked. “You pig, you _whore_!”

“You – you –” Brian dropped his head into his arms, shoulders shaking. When he had his breathing under control, he tried again: “Listen, when you see a joke like that coming, I don’t care how bad it is, you can’t just wimp-le out of it.”

“I’m hanging up. I’m hanging up! I’m deleting your contact information, I’m cutting up every picture of you on my fridge, and I’m going to your house to burn it to the ground. This ends _now_ , Tracy, for your own good.”

“Hunhhhh,” Brian moaned dramatically, rolling over onto his back and arching his spine up, “Give me four Hail Mary’s and a Rosary bud, baby, yeah –”

“Stop, stop –” Katya cackled, and that was when Adore banged on Trixie’s door and yelled, “Bitch, are you dressed yet?!”

Brian flailed and fell off the end of the bed. On the other end of the line, Katya dropped into a low, rasping wheeze.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Brian said, and then louder towards the door, “No, fuck, sorry! Give me thirty seconds and I’m out.”

“I didn’t sign up to listen to your weird-ass sex shit, by the way,” Adore yelled back.

Katya was making a noise like a dying animal. He was old and his constitution was weak; he honestly might not survive this.

“Fuck me,” Brian managed. He dragged himself to his feet and pulled on the jeans he’d grabbed, and then yanked the tank top over his head. “If you get me kicked out of here, I’m going to make your life a living hell,” he said towards the phone.

“If you get kicked out, it’ll be your own damn fault,” said Katya, still a little breathless. “Where are you guys headed?”

Brian tugged his shoe up over his heel. “Adore was asked to host this mock pageant thing. We’re gonna get her something suitably busted. You want pics?”

“Duh.” Katya was silent for a moment. “You want me to say hi to Shea for you?”

Brian looked up from where he was bent over, struggling with his other sneaker. He bit at the inside of his cheek as his thoughts scattered like bowling pins, laces forgotten in his fingers.

“You don’t – I just thought I’d ask,” Katya said hurriedly.

“No,” Brian said. He shook his head, trying to knock some sense back into his brain. “No, yeah, of course. Give her my love. Just…”

“Not in front of everyone, check,” said Katya. Then he cleared his throat, and suddenly he sounded almost – shy. “Call you later?”

“Of course.” Brian grabbed his phone and thumbed it off speaker, held it to his ear as he turned back to his bag to hunt down his hat. “Talk to you later, love you, love you, bye.”

“Yeah,” Katya said, “you too,” and then there was the sudden silence of a disconnected call.

Brian paused. He lowered his phone to give it a bemused look.

The banging at his door started again.

“Bitch, are you ready?”

“Yes, bitch,” Brian called, jamming his cap on his head. He swung open the door. “What would everyone think if they knew that you were the real adult out of the two of us?”

“Good luck getting ‘em to believe it,” Adore said, slinging a canvas bag over her shoulder and rolling her eyes. The bag said _DO WEED HAVE A PROBLEM?_ on the side; Brian would give it a six out of ten on his personal pun scale, but a shining ten out of ten on his personal Adore scale. “Let’s go before the heat hits, dude.”

 

*

 

The heat did hit, and it hit hard; the August sun was high overhead without a cloud in sight for once, and every person they passed on the street looked like they were on the red-faced verge of a stroke. Adore had tied her hair up in little pigtails; she was wearing a romper and waving a fan in her face unconcernedly. Brian, who had started to sweat through his tanktop, hated her a little bit.

“I have _no_ hair,” he said as they pushed through the door to their first stop, a little secondhand store with chokers and drapey hipster clothes on the mannequins in the window. He sighed with relief as the A/C blasted him – not as strong as you’d get in LA, but he’d take what he could fucking get. “How are you suffering less than me?”

“I’m Latina, girl,” said Adore. She smiled cheerily at the shopkeeper behind the counter, then pointed at him with a drill sergeant’s determination. “Okay, we’re going full-on _first time garbage_ , okay? I’m talking Wednesday night amateur show realness. If it looks like it costs more than fifteen bucks, I don’t want it.”

“First time in drags at a ball, darling,” Brian drawled. “I think I can do that. Garbage is where I live.”

The racks were mainly trendy resales of clothes from legitimately nice stores – this was slightly higher scale than anywhere Brian ever went during _his_ amateur days – but he knew what the fuck he was about. He got nearly an armful of awful florals, sequins, and problem patterns, threw half at Adore’s head, then ducked into a change room to humiliate himself.

“Okay,” he called to the next stall a minute later, inspecting his reflection in the mirror, “so this is like… Dionne from Clueless, if she did a lot of coke and got a little too sequin-happy with her hot glue gun.”

“Clueless meets Cruel Intentions?”

“ _Bitch_ , yes.”

There was a knock at the door. “I’m out, let me see!”

He opened the door and burst out laughing.

Adore was wearing someone’s prom dress – if that someone was a seventeen year old goth girl who’d seen Beetlejuice a few too many times. Full Southern prom fantasy in funeral black. She held a sheer purple shirt bunched up in her fist to the side of her head like a fascinator veil and posed – until she looked back at him, and then she let out the ugliest, most wonderful guffaw.

“What?” said Brian, deadpan. “Don’t you like it?”

The burnt orange cheerleader skirt and the red blazer with its spiraling sequins, hanging open over a too-small dusty-yellow crop top stretched tight over his chest – he was giving you _fashion_ , honey. Adore stumbled to the side and grabbed at a coat rack to steady herself, cackling; over her head, the shopkeeper eyed them with a mix of irritation and bemusement.

“Dionne, right?” Brian said. “ _He does like to shop, Cher. And the boy can dress_. Oh, honey.”

“Hymenally challenged as fuck. If you don’t buy every single piece of that I will,” said Adore, still giggling. “Lemme – lemme take a picture, okay, I want to send it to everyone I know but since you won’t let me do that we are _definitely_ sending it to Katya.”

“I told you, garbage is what I do. And who I am. Underneath this polycotton crop top, it’s just a full on landfill, stinking, flies –”

“Shut the fuck up and let me take your picture,” Adore said, snatching the phone from his hand.

She tried to aim the camera at him but kept bursting into giggles, which would start _him_ off, shaking as he tried to hold his pose, legs crossed, chest out, back arched, with both hands cupping the back of his head, the short hairs scratching his palms. Finally he got himself under control, pursing his lips and staring at the camera, and there was the _click_ of the digital shutter.

“I’m ‘boutta bust out of this top, girl,” Brian said, lowering his arms. “Do you think they’ll make me pay for it if it tears? ‘Cause I’m not the one.”

“It’s cute,” said Adore, tapping rapidly at his phone. “I’d wear it.”

“Well, it’d actually fit you, to start,” Brian said, and then Adore’s phone dinged with a text and his mouth tugged up into a grin. “What’s she say?”

“In all caps: _THAT BLAZER THOUGH? I WANT IT, PLEASE MOM._ ”

“Oh my god.” Brian rolled his eyes dramatically, biting back his grin. “She calls me ‘mom’ a lot for someone with an apparently-great relationship with her mother. What?” he said when Adore started giggling again. “I’m just saying.”

He took a picture of Adore’s outfit and sent it as well, then they tried a few more looks, and then he bought the blazer and they moved on to the next shop. As they drifted away from the city centre they had more luck, finding the kind of smaller places that didn’t show up when you googled “Seattle thrift stores,” with vintage pieces for Brian to drool over and goth melodrama for Adore.

He felt – giddy. Dumb. Young. Holding up the ugliest things he could find to his chest so that Adore would laugh, sending pics to Katya of the outfits he put together with them. He felt like he was in college again, over the summer, drunk on shitty cheap beer with his roommate and getting up to no good. Texting the cute boy from his costume design class – but different, too, because this wasn’t some cute boy he’d never seen outside of class but was hoping to run into at Milwaukee Pride. This was _Katya_.

_does this make me look fat,_ he texted, sending along a pic of himself in the changing room mirror, wrapped in a searingly pink deep-necked bodycon dress with the most godawful cut-outs along the hips. H &M had _so_ much to answer for.

_Idk, all i’m seeing is PECS,_ Katya texted back.

Brian smiled down at his phone, the fluorescent lights overhead turning the screen a glinting yellow. Fumbling behind himself with his free hand, he turned his chin up, looking at the white walls, the mirror, and the dark floral curtain hanging over the doorway as he arched his back to ease the zipper down to his waist. He slipped his arms out of the dress and pushed it down to his waist.

_you only want me for my body,_ he sent, with a pic of him like that, smizing at the mirror ridiculously.

He watched the ‘read’ notification flicker on with a fluttering in his stomach. _Stupid_ , he told himself as he slid the dress off entirely; this was Katya, and he knew Katya, and they’d both come clean about the way they felt with a surety and finality that they’d never hit on any previous time they’d tried to talk it out. So why did he feel all of twenty-one again?

Twenty-one was mainly terrible, he reminded himself. And twenty-seven wasn’t _ancient_. He just… he _felt_ ancient, a lot of the time. Like his bones weren’t going to hold out much longer. And this, now – this was something better.

His phone buzzed.

It was a picture of uncooked chicken breast.

He barked a laugh and typed _BITCH_ , but before he could hit send the caption came:

_FROM: KATYA - 1:34 PM - Wednesday August 20th, 2017_

_sorry that’s me_

And Brian was smiling, he was smiling _so hard_ , he was grinning at his fucking phone like it was an invitation to All Stars 3, a handwritten love letter, and one of those awful soppy photo strips you get at the mall, all in one. Whatever the feeling was in his chest, it was bigger than his ribs could hold; it felt like he was sending it out in waves, bouncing off the walls of the tiny changing room.

There was a knock at the door. “I got nothing,” said Adore, “Ready to move on?”

“Yeah,” Brian said, but he was also thinking _no, I’ll stay, I’ll stay here with this feeling as long as it’ll have me._

At the next shop he spotted a pair of earrings first thing, little studs shaped like hands in silver with fine lines etched into the palms: heart, life, death. He paid for them on the spot. The person behind the counter – punk, androgynous, definitely giving Adore the eye – tucked them into a little black envelope for him, and the envelope went into his wallet. Then Adore was yelling at him, insistently, “I have a good feeling about this place, dude, a good ass vibe, and if you don’t come help me I _swear to god_ –”

So he went over, and he picked out some garbage, and tried a few outfits that could most accurately be described, in order, as: Jackie Burkhart from _That 70s’ Show_ on an acid trip, goth girl trying to appease her Catholic mother, and Lady Bunny as a teenager in the eighties at the last disco still standing (which was unrealistic; Lady Bunny hatched from a fossilized dinosaur egg in the twenties, and her youth inspired the phrase “the Great Depression.”) None of them was quite right, although Katya sent a full keysmash response to the Bunny look, and Adore – who was the person they were shopping for, after all – snagged the black crop top with white crosses on the tits, as well as the little Mary and Jesus choker he’d paired with it.

As she tried on a last few things, Brian ran his hands idly through the nearest rack, which was full of lacy, silky things. It was an odd sight, the whites and creams that most women’s lingerie and nightwear came in, in the middle of a vintage store whose walls were painted black and papered floor to ceiling with band posters. Brian found himself smiling faintly down at the rack, like an old friend he’d run across in a foreign country.

His fingers caught on beads, small and hard and entirely wrong for this section of the store, and he pulled the offending garment out.

“Oh shit,” said Adore behind him a moment later. He was still running his thumb down a silken lapel. “That’s _you_ , girl.”

It really was.

Dusty pink silk fell from the wire frame of the hanger, taking up a white sheen where the light hit the cross-hatching patterns in its folds. It was a long wrap-around dress, deep-necked; beaded at the top of its lapels were a pair of silver scissors with ominously red tips.

Brian fell a little bit in love. His stomach, however, decided that what it felt was closer to nausea.

“You’ve gotta buy it,” Adore said fervently.

Brian shook his head. “I’m not going to your show, girl.”

“So buy it and don’t come to the show – are you telling me you’re never gonna find a time and place to wear something that perfect and bad-ass? Come on.”

_Yes_ , Brian thought, but that wasn’t –

He didn’t want to be thinking about this. The day had been so perfect so far. And this past week it had started to feel like maybe, maybe, he could make this work.

“Buy it,” Adore said firmly, “or I will.”

“Okay,” Brian said, “okay,” and then he realized – he was being stupid. It was just a dress. It was a fifteen dollar vintage dress, with seams in the shoulders he was going to have to let out – just a dress, and just a moment, and five minutes from now they would be back out on the street, in the sun, and it didn’t matter at all.

It shouldn’t.

It was fine.

Adore bought her outfit; Brian bought the dress.

 

*

 

The metallic twang of his guitar strings filled the room as Brian picked away, note after note, not really going anywhere. The sky outside his window – nearly three weeks in, still no curtain – was a deep, dull purple, like the humidity had shifted the whole sky out of focus. It was hot, lethargic; he and Adore had played for an hour or so before she’d begged off, citing the siren call of a blunt and nine solid hours of sleep, “ _for once in my life._ ” He could hear the low rumble of her snoring from the next room.

The notes transitioned from a random flow to a progression, the melody he’d been fiddling with since he’d left LA. Normally he could get a whole song down in one sitting, but the lyrics had been fighting him – the words, when he tried to put them down, came out either ingenuine or _too_ honest. The former he wouldn’t put down, and the latter he couldn’t.

_The tide and the tracks,_ he’d scrawled on the train,

_each with their own pull,_

_and I can’t hide, and I can’t go back;_

_but you –_

But what?

His notebook was open beside him on the bed, not to the lyrics but to his pros and cons diagram. He’d added two since he’d first sketched out its lines. Pros to his life as it had stood before he came to Seattle – travelling, making his art, and doing it successfully – were, thus far: travelling while making his art successfully. That was obvious. Almost too obvious to write it down, in fact, but the empty space had been glaring at him, and he’d had to put _something_ down. And it was true. It was why he did it.

Cons, he’d added after getting home from thrift store shopping: _no days like today._

And that wasn’t exactly true, but he didn’t know how else to put it. Sure, there were ways to disappear within Los Angeles; sure, he could spend a day thrift shopping while on tour in some European city whose name he’d forget by the next day, and he’d probably get that same feeling of anonymity in either instance. But what he’d been feeling today wasn’t _anonymity_. It was something else, something smaller, more domestic. Something somehow warmer.

Brian sighed heavily, then, with a baleful glance, lifted a foot and kicked the notebook off the bed.

Over on the desk, his phone began to ring.

“Shit,” Brian said, scrambling for it with a glance through the wall, where Adore was sleeping. He accepted the call without looking, then froze, not speaking, his mouth going dry.

“Tracy?”

Relief unfurled inside of him at the sound of Katya’s voice. “Yeah,” he said. “You would not believe how loud my ringtone is. I nearly had a heart attack.”

“At your age? Are you getting too much cholesterol in your diet, mother?”

“Fuck you.” Brian got his guitar from the bed and carried it one-handed over to its case, tucking it away. “Adore’s outfit tomorrow is going to be so good, by the way. She looks like she spent all her money on a fake ID to compete in Showgirls’ Wednesday amateur contest and had none left over to buy her drag anywhere but the bargain bin. It’s _so_ good.”

“Ugh, I love that,” said Katya. There was some unintelligible sound on the other end that Brian identified from experience as Katya fussing with whatever was in front of him. Katya hummed distractedly over it. “And you – how are you doing?”

“I’m –” Brian said, then stopped himself. He thought about those blank pages, the words that wouldn’t come. “Today was really great,” he said slowly. “I’m doing okay. I’m doing – better.”

There was a drawn-out exhale on the other side of the line. “That’s good,” Katya said. He sounded so _relieved_.

A giddy feeling began to simmer in Brian’s stomach, almost heady, like just saying the words out loud gave him permission to finally believe them. “I _am_ ,” he said. “I feel like – I feel like I can breathe again. This past week… I haven’t felt this good in ages. I’m sleeping, I’m eating, it’s like – it’s like being a functional human being again. Isn’t that fucking crazy?”

“Completely batshit,” Katya said, voice fond. There was some more fidgeting. “You sound good, Tracy.”

“Yeah.” Brian flipped the switch on the wall and shrugged out of his T-shirt. The mattress creaked in the dark as he flopped down on top of the thin sheets. He looked up at the ceiling, then smiled, tapping the fingers of his right hand against his stomach. “It’s like – you’re gonna make fun of me,” he said, his voice breaking as he laughed at himself, “but. Today, when we were shopping, I was thinking. I felt like it was the summer between sophomore and junior year of college, when my roommate and I would start drinking early on the days we didn’t have to work, then go out into the city and do the kind of stupid shit we never got to do as kids. You know? Make bad choices. Scandalize the little old ladies on their way out of church. It felt like we could do anything, because consequences couldn’t exist, not when it was that hot out, the sky was that clear, and we had – we had our whole lives ahead of us. You know? Oh my god, stop laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you,” said Katya, who was definitely laughing at him. But it was gentle, quiet, respectful of the late hour. “It’s you. I love it by default.”

“And you laugh at me by default. I get it.”

“Tomato, tomaht- _hoe_.”

Brian smiled up at the ceiling. There was a feeling in his chest, like when you threw open all the windows in the summer and a sweet breeze filled your home, one room at a time. That green smell, like a breath of relief. That was how it felt inside of him, listening to Katya’s voice, remembering the sun on his skin that afternoon.

“Listen, none of us were cool in college,” he said. “Some of us never got cool, for that matter. I accept it about myself. I like comfortable sandals, and days that are warm but not _too_ hot, and –”

“– and scandalizing little old ladies on their way to worship.”

“Yeah, that too.” Brian huffed a laugh. “I mean, it wasn’t a _great_ time, not always. This was before I ever even went to Chicago. But that part of it – life should have that, I think. That feeling. The days out in the sun where you don’t have to worry about your responsibilities, what’s waiting for you at home or at work. Making a fool of yourself with a friend. Texting the guy you like, and holding your breath while you wait for him to text back.”

Katya exhaled, just quietly. “Are we still talking about college?”

The corners of Brian’s mouth curled up; he drummed his fingers against his stomach, muscles shivering a little when it tickled. “We could be,” he said. “I’m not sure how forward I should be right now. You got all flustered when I brought up sex this morning.”

“I did not get _flustered_ – you – we  – “ Katya spluttered, half-laughing.

“It’s so funny when you do this,” Brian said, voice crackling as he tried to keep it low. “Nothing throws you, ever, and then every once in awhile if I flirt back or say something sexual, you get all – yeah, flustered.” He paused, then added, “I’m not saying I mind. Obviously.”

“It’s – I don’t mind, either,” Katya said. His voice had gone low too, just a smoker’s rasp in Brian’s ear. “Duh. I don’t mind. It’s just – at some point really, really early on, I put you in the ‘probably won’t even entertain the thought of fucking me’ box, and then sometimes you take yourself out of it and my brain has to come to terms with the new parameters of reality. That doesn’t make sense. Does that make sense?”

Brian exhaled slowly. His skin had gone up in goosebumps; he pressed his fingertips down against his stomach, anchoring himself in place. “I don’t know,” he said. “I stopped following just after you said _fucking me_.”

There was a quiet pause. “I did say that,” Katya agreed. Then, “It sounds even better when you say it.”

Brian licked his lips. He shifted his heels against the mattress; his hips worked up, just a little, nudging his hardening cock up against the tented fabric between his knees. These sweatpants were old and worn thin, cut off like shorts, and the fabric was soft and nubby against his dick. He didn’t mean to make a sound, but it escaped him anyway, so quiet, and Katya inhaled sharply next to his ear.

Brian swallowed. When he could trust his voice, he said, the words tumbling out rapidly, “Things have changed now. For me. The lines that we had before, there were reasons for them, but those reasons don’t apply now, not to me, and I – I want this. And that’s _not_ going to change, not when I come back, or –”

He cut himself off. Or what? He didn’t want to think about that; his dick was so hard now and Katya was breathing _right in his ear_ , like he was right there, like he could be there in bed with Brian right now, chin propped in his hand, elbow up on the pillow beside Brian’s head, his other hand curled around his own cock in the dark, just a nearly-imperceptible shift of his wrist visible and the sound of skin on skin.

“Trixie,” Katya said, breathy, right there, “I want it too. And I know that I’m, like, schizophrenic about what I want, but not with you. Not you. Fuck – wanted it so long, you, can I –”

“Are you touching yourself?” Brian said. His own hand was slipping under his waistband, taking a firm grip of his dick, giving it a tug. His hips jerked up, fucking into the circle of his fingers. “I told you – I don’t talk dirty before the fifth date. God, you’d better fucking fuck me _breathless_ , you cunt –”

Katya made a high, choked off noise, and Brian felt all the breath shudder out of his chest like he’d been punched. Precome dripped wetly over his fingers.

He let go of his dick, gripped his thigh instead.

“Wait,” he said.

The sounds from the other end of the line – laboured breathing, and something else, something slick – went still.

Brian licked his lips and said, “I’m so – Katya, I’m so fucking hard right now, but. The first time we have sex, I want to be able to touch you. I want you to be touching me.”

His fingernails were biting into his skin. His hips were working up against his restraint, tight, halting little circles, bringing the head of his cock up into sweet sweet contact with his shorts.

“You,” Katya said, voice raw, “are going to fucking kill me, Trixie Mattel.”

“Oh, come on,” said Brian; he was surprised to find that he was grinning, even as everything in his body yelled that he was being an _idiot_. “It’s not a little bit hot to you that we’re about to hang up and jerk off, thinking about each other? Well, I don’t know what you’ll be thinking about. _I’ll_ be thinking about you.”

“Uh-huh,” said Katya, breathy again and _definitely_ touching himself, the fucking cheater.

Brian had figured it out before Katya ever had: he _liked_ when Brian teased him.

“Yeah,” Brian said, barely a whisper, digging his nails harder into the thick muscle of his thigh. “Your hands on my ass, my thighs, lifting my knees up – feeling you – feeling you push inside –” His voice wavered; his heels dug into the mattress, hips thrusting helplessly into the air. “The _second_ you’re off the line my hand’s gonna be on my dick, fuck, thinking about you on top of me –”

“ _Fuck_ ,” Katya said, strangled, then the line went totally silent.

Brian’s breath hitched in his throat, and then he was dropping his phone from numb fingers, wrapping his hand back around his dick, which was painfully hard and dripping precome against his stomach. His other hand got an iron grip on the corner of his pillow; the fabric bit into his palm. He stroked himself so fast, the skin already slick with precome, and his mind kept replaying that last second, that tight, punched-out _fuck_ in Katya’s voice. And he thought of those other things too – Katya over him, forearms braced beside his head, pinning him in place, suffocatingly close as he fucked into him, so deep, barely pulling out at all. The muscles of his back shifting relentlessly under Brian’s palms. One of Katya’s hands coming down to grip Brian’s ass, nails sharp, spreading him – Katya’s eyes glinting in the dark – Katya, across the country, thinking of him and shaking –

Brian let go of the pillow to cover his own mouth, and he bit into the thick muscle at the base of his thumb as he came all over his hand.

Slowly, the dark coolled around him as he breathed. The faint lights from the street shone high on the wall opposite the window; the still had no curtains, but the angle was such that no one could have seen him. He traced the lights with his eyes for a while, waiting for his pulse to slow and enjoying the faint high that buzzed in his veins. He wiped his hand on his shorts and kicked them off onto the floor.

Beside his head, his phone lit up with a text.

_if it’s not as good as i just imagined, i want a refund,_ he read. _in-store credit will work in a pinch._

He grinned, blinking heavily, eyes slipping to half mast. The high was fading; his mind was clear, and he felt abruptly like he was seconds from sleep.

_I’ll pinch you_ , he texted back, and followed it up with a heart.

His eyes were drifting shut with midnight finality when his phone lit up again – the kiss emoji, red and bright against the darkness.

 

*

 

“This thing is a monster,” said Brian the next morning, frowning down at the sewing machine on Adore’s coffee table. “Did it come with the place?”

“It was a gift from B,” Adore said. She moved around the couch to lean over his shoulder, watching as he fiddled with the thread tangled in the needles. “I told her I was going to use it as a doorstop.”

“ _There_ we go.” Brian tugged the thread all free. He grabbed a flannel that was hanging over the arm of the couch – “ _Hey_!” protested Adore, although it could have been either of theirs – and sewed a quick, clean line near the hem. “All good. Bring your dress over – hey, do you want me to do it?”

There was a moment’s pause; he looked back at Adore to find her watching him. “Really?”

It – he hadn’t offered it like it was a _big deal_. She didn’t need to look so thoughtful. “Yeah, if you have your crap pinned already. It’ll go a lot faster if I do it, and you can put your face on while I do.”

“Yeah, sure,” Adore said. “Thanks.”

Still weirdly thoughtful. _Brian_ wasn’t thinking that hard about his own choices here.

He pushed it out of his mind as he accepted the dress Adore would wear that night and turned it over in his hands, assessing the adjustments she’d pinned into place. There weren’t many – they still wanted that messy, first time look. He pushed and tugged the dress into place so that the bodice was under the sewing machine first, and got to work. The hum of the motor was oddly soothing.

As he inched the fabric forward with his fingers, he realized he’d missed this.

Adore had set up across from him, sitting on the floor with a mirror leaned up against the table as she worked. Brian glanced up to watch every so often, letting his fingers do the job for him on memory. There was that feeling in the air again, summer of 2009, even without the muggy Milwaukee heat; like he was back in his college living room sewing up whatever dumbass outfit he was going to wear to Rocky that night, or backstage, rushing through some final adjustments by hand while the others put on their stage makeup in the too-yellow lights. It could even be later than that – at Berlin, with Kim, Shea, and Trannika painting their faces in the mirror, shit-talking each other’s brows over shots.

That was the feeling.

God.

The last new seam on the dress ran its course; he back-stitched to end it, then eased the dress out from under the machine. It was an absolute eyesore – a baby pink quinceanera dress, absolutely too short for her, with dulled plastic gems clustered between the tits down to the waist and a bunch of violently purple tulle that Adore had pinned to the back like a bustle. He held it in his hands for a second, like he was weighing it, the cheap polyfibre skirt rustling loudly between his fingers. Then he said, “You know what? I think I’m going to need to see this bullshit in action.”

“What?” said Adore, looking up with her eyeliner scarily close to her eye. Then her jaw dropped and she punched the air. “Yes! _Yes_ , fuck yes. Literally no one else I know was gonna be there, dude, I was gonna be so sad all night. Yes!”

“Okay, first of all, take it down to a two or I’m outta here,” Brian said, but he was grinning, too.

“Nope, too late. This is _happening_ , bitch.” Adore eyed him. “Are you gonna go like that, or…”

Brian thought about the dress he’d bought the day before, still folded tidily and tucked away in its bag, out of sight and out of mind. He shook his head – _no_ to Adore, and also to clear it. “Could I borrow something of yours?”

 

*

 

“Moscow mule,” Brian told the bartender, settling down on a stool at the farthest end where the bar met the wall. He crossed his legs carefully. He’d walked in with Adore and they’d split apart without a word – for all Adore’s fervent promises that _it’s gonna be cool, for real, it’s so chill and you look so different, no one’s gonna recognize you_ , she’d gotten visibly nervous the closer their Uber got the bar. The place was Capitol Hill adjacent, gay but not _gay_ , a dark little place with a cramped stage and the washrooms in the back cordoned off with signs that said PERFORMERS ONLY – HOLD IT, ASK NICELY, OR PISS IN THE ALLEY. There were only a few patrons so far, so Brian had made a beeline for the wall.

He may not believe in blending his face, but this kind of blending? He was _on_ that shit.

The guy behind the bar passed his drink over and he accepted with a nod of thanks. He pulled out his phone and took a pic of it, then sent it to Katya with the caption: _thinking of you._

The little grey dots appeared almost immediately.

_FROM: KATYA - 10:35 PM - Thursday August 21st, 2017_

_my sponsor would call this text harassment_

Brian gaped at his phone, then burst into giggles as it clicked. A little of the tension he was feeling – like static crackling in his stomach – faded. He took a sip of his drink with one hand, careful of his lipstick, as he texted back, _not like that!! idiot. it’s a moscow mule._

Katya replied, _because i wear mules? that’s so sweet_

Brian rolled his eyes.

_because you’re the bastard child of a horse and an ass, duh,_ he sent back.

The bar was starting to fill up. The official name of the event was _MISS PROFOUNDLY NAUSEATING WEIRDO SEATTLE_ (or, as Adore embarrassingly had to explain to Brian, Miss PNW Seattle); the crowd it had attracted looked exactly as he would have expected. Lots of multicoloured hair, lots of piercings and studded jackets, lots of dresses paired with beards. Brian shifted backwards in his seat, but in one of Adore’s old black dresses, a leather jacket, ankle boots with too many buckles, and a completely different face, no one would look twice at him.

He levelled an assessing glance at the lights above the bar, guessing at the best angle, and took a quick picture of himself from the shoulders up: brown wig, over-the-top smoulder, and his best approximation of Adore’s beat (Adore had offered, but he’d seen the season six makeover episode, thanks.) The face that stared back at him from his screen was like looking through a wormhole into some strange alternate universe – natural brows, blended cheeks, crimson-black lips. He sent it to Katya before he could second-guess, followed immediately by the text: _what am i doing._

A moment later his phone started ringing. He startled, stared, and hit reject.

It started ringing again.

This time he rejected it immediately, then opened his messages as quickly as possible. _Oh my god, STOP,_ he texted to Katya.

_THAT IS A WOMANNNNN_ , Katya sent back.

_uh, a boring woman named madyson or something equally stupid,_ texted Brian, starting to smile.

The lights on stage flickered, rushing people into their seats.

His phone buzzed multiple times in rapid succession. _a boring woman named madyson (or something equally stupid) who could easily steal my heart_ , Katya had texted,

_if it weren’t already lost to the most beautiful woman in_

_if not the whole world_

_at least a very small region of rural wisconsin_

Brian barked a laugh, then glanced around quickly, but no one was looking. He texted back, _you type too fast for someone with such advanced arthritis_ , then silenced his phone and tucked it away.

“Miss World” started blaring over the speakers and the lights flashed on stage.

“Seattle, how’re you motherfuckers doing?” Adore shouted as she appeared to raucous cheers. “Good shit. So I’ve never been in a pageant, or to one, but I did appear on a televised competition program you might’ve heard of. A lot of gays, a lot of terrible outfits and bad lighting…”

The crowd laughed. There were a couple of boos, and Brian felt a smile begin to creep across his face as he looked out at the crowd. They were mostly drunk and one hundred percent off their heads. These were, he realized, _his_ kind of assholes.

“You know, the one with a panel of asshole judges who didn’t know what to do with a glittery baby mermaid like me. You know the one! Don’t you? You’ve definitely heard of it,” said Adore with a coy look. “A little show called… American Idol?”

The crowd screamed and laughed, and Adore, on stage, glowed with it.

It was a good fucking show. A good, loud, rowdy, weird-ass show, with some queens Brian vaguely remembered from the scene on the few times he’d visited Seattle before and some queens who were very obviously experiencing their first dose of stage fright ever. Each and every one was dressed in their absolute worst and strangest drag. Brian didn’t leave the bar and he kept his mules coming, but he found himself forgetting to keep an eye out, laughing and cheering along with the crowd, even on occasion heckling with the rest. The vibe in the room was so _good_ – one of those perfect nights where everyone was on the same page, riding the same high, taking their corners too fast all together.

At one point, Adore asked a contestant – who had come on-stage for her number with a bucket, turned it over her head, and doused herself and her pretty white dress with real pig’s blood, the nature of which she’d confirmed at the end by thrusting the butcher shop’s receipt in the air with a bloody fist – “So, uh. What would you say your influences are?”

“You know, there are so many,” said the queen with a thoughtful look. “Citalopram, sertraline, Prozac –”

Brian burst out laughing and shouted over the cheers of the crowd, “That’s a _winner_ saboteur, yaaaas!”

The laughter swelled louder; Adore’s eyes flashed to him and she cackled.

“Rupaul’s Drag Race – cheaper and better than therapy,” she said. “Well, just cheaper. You heard it here, dudes. Although, like, maybe only if you dress like me. You don’t want to know what Courtney’s shit cost.”

All the queens performed, Adore held up pieces of paper with drawings on them instead of scores, Brian drank heavily along with the rest of the crowd and had an excellent fucking time. By halfway through the show he was on first-name basis with his bartender, Joe – although he’d introduced himself as Madyson Williams, because he _was_ more or less under the witness protection program. Adore did a number at the end of the show, and then, when the crowd wouldn’t shut up, came out and lipsynced as “Miss World” played again. And then it was over. 

The lights came back up as Adore and the rest of the performers vanished back into the washrooms. Brian watched them go with a warm feeling filling his chest.

“Hey,” said Joe the bartender behind him, “Hey, Madyson Williams, if that is your real name. One more for the road?”

He turned back and smiled. “Sure, why the hell not,” he said. Joe shot him a sliver of a grin.

“Listen,” Joe said as he passed the drink over a moment later, “You’re fun, and funny, and if you’re this cute in drag I bet you’re cute out of it too. Or if this is your thing, I’m good with that. Do you maybe want to grab a coffee tomorrow?”

Brian blinked. “Oh, uh,” he said. “Um. Much less cute out of drag, first of all.”

Joe laughed.

It was almost a shame, except it wasn’t one at all. “I’m with someone,” Brian said. The words were soft like cotton candy in his mouth; it was the first time he’d said it out loud, he realized. “But – thanks.”

Joe smiled, raising his hands – _no harm done_. “If they put that look on your face, they must be someone good,” he said.

Brian tapped his fingers against the bar and smiled down at his drink. “Yeah.” It felt like everything inside of him was glowing. “He is.”

Joe winked, and went back to the other side of the bar.

“Hey,” said someone, quietly, from right behind Brian. “Hey, uh… are you Trixie Mattel?”

The world spun to a full stop.

Once upon a time, Brian’s threshold for fight or flight was much higher. Even just a month ago. It used to take a lot to bring him to that point, where the brain went offline and instinct took over, because fuck-all phased him – how could it? He wasn’t a wilting flower, and he definitely wasn’t fifteen years old anymore.

But now, in that dark bar, Brian froze, spine stiffening.

“I just, I noticed you come in with Adore, and I heard you and recognized your voice and – yeah.”

_Put on your fucking show face,_ he told himself, and he turned around.

Five foot four of hopeful wide eyes stared back at him. Her mouth opened and hung slack when she realized it really was him. But other than that, she could have been any other person from the crowd – she looked a little punk, a little weird, and very gay. The least threatening person in the world, probably.

“Hey girl,” he said. “Uh – could we keep it down a little? You look super cute, by the way.”

“Thanks,” she stuttered. “You look – wow.”

He managed a self-deprecating laugh. “I’m on the D.L., girl. We figured no one would see through this, uh, pacific northwest goth with a cushy daytime job fantasy.”

“Oh my god, totally.” She was still staring at him with that awestruck look.

Brian swallowed. “What’s your name, sweetheart?”

“Kayla,” she said. She thrust a hand forward, then _physically grabbed it_ and pulled it back. “Sorry, I know you don’t – I mean – oh my god, I made it awkward. I knew I was gonna make it awkward.”

“It’s cool, girl,” he said. He dredged up a smile and leaned forward a little. “Listen, Kayla, I’m really just here supporting a friend, you know? And I’d, um – I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything about seeing me here. You know?”

She nodded, and then nodded again more emphatically. “Yeah, oh, for sure. For sure. I’m just so happy to meet you – you’re a really, really big inspiration to me.”

“Of course,” Brian said. “It’s good to meet you too. Have a good night, yeah? Drink responsibly, or whatever.”

She laughed and took a step back, waved, took another step back. Left. She was cute, charming. Harmless.

Brian’s ears were buzzing.

Adore came back a few minutes later, still in full drag and grinning hugely, as Brian fiddled with the straw in his empty drink. “Hey,” she said, “you ready to go?”

“Yeah,” said Brian, putting his glass down on the bar with a cold thud of finality.

 

*

 

Katya called at almost one AM; the phone buzzed on silent, lighting up the bedsheets beneath it, until Brian answered.

“I cannot _believe_ ,” Katya started, “the absolute nerve, the _audacity_ , of sending me that picture, with no context or follow-up, _right before I had to go on stage_. The gumption! The gall! The – the –”

“Careful,” said Brian. “I’m gonna start thinking you liked her better than Trixie.”

“I like everything you do,” Katya said dismissively. “What happened?! Where were you?”

“Adore had this show.” Brian adjusted the laptop on his crossed legs. “I was there for moral support.”

There was a pause.

“Hey,” said Katya – and now he sounded hesitant. “Hey, Tracy, are you okay?”

“Fine.” He refreshed twitter. “A fan recognized me at the show. It was cool and I’m doing just great.”

“Oh. Oh, fuck.”

Brian hummed. He clicked over to the next open tab – the drag race subreddit – and refreshed that in turn.

“Trixie…”

“I don’t think I can keep doing this.”

“What?” Katya said. A frantic energy started to creep into his voice. “No, no, come on, don’t say that. You said – come on, Tracy. The fan thing can be managed. You can cut down on meet and greets when you come back – or stop doing them entirely. Cut down the number of shows even. We can put our collective foot down – feet – foot – fuck, Trixie, this can be handled. Tracy, you _said_.”

Brian looked up at the bare whiteness of the ceiling, steadying his breathing, then straight across the room. The dress – the one he’d bought with Adore – was dangling from a hanger on one of the hooks sticking out of the wall. His gaze flicked away – and landed squarely on the small pile of gifts he’d bought for Katya over the course of his time in Seattle so far: the blazer, the earrings. The book of poems.

His notebook was on the desk too. He’d picked it up before the show, weighed it in his hands like that could tell him something. Like his stupid fucking pros and cons really meant anything, like he could make some tidy decision on those tidy pages that meant more than the way he couldn’t even go out for one night – in a city he wasn’t supposed to be in, to support a friend he wasn’t supposed to be with, having been dark on social media for _three weeks_ – without someone picking him out of a crowd and deciding their emotional closure in meeting him meant more than his personal space, his privacy, and his right to be a fucking human being on his own time.

“Just – just wait and see, okay?” Katya said to his continued silence. “Maybe they won’t post about it. It would be on _my_ feed already if they had, right, so – I don’t do math, or graphs, or integral calculus, but my non-expert opinion is that the odds are definitely _de_ creasing with time –”

“It’s not just the fans,” Brian interrupted. It burst out of him with concussive force, like some critical stage had been reached, like a can of soda shaken and released. “It’s _everything_ , it’s the whole fucking culture. It’s travelling constantly, never seeing the people I love, losing touch with friends, managing the wants and needs of strangers when I can’t even be there for the wants and needs of the people who are _mine_ , who _I_ invited into my life. It’s jetlag and humidity changes and dry skin and not enough sleep and losing joy in something I love. And on top of that the kind of fucking _cunts_ who talk shit about you behind your back at a show, and get on facebook to post that you “couldn’t handle the heat,” and –”

He cut himself off, panting. His whole fucking CON list, everything he couldn’t write down before, lingered in the air, like a siren ringing as an ambulance peeled past you, explosively there and then already gone.

This time it was Katya who was silent. Brian could fill in the gaps.  _You said_ , that’s what Katya had pleaded; _you said you were good; you said that nothing would change for us, that you wouldn’t let it, if you came back – or –_

Or what?

Brian pressed a hand over his eyes, drew it down to cover his mouth. Waited until he could breathe right again.

“I can’t do this right now,” he said finally. “I’m not thinking clearly. I need to sleep.”

“Okay,” Katya said. His voice was small. Too much like that first, awful phone call. Brian swallowed. “I love you,” Katya went on. “I love you, okay?”

He said it like he thought Brian didn’t know. Brian put his palm up to his stomach, feeling sick. How could he think that? What had Brian done – how had he fucked up so bad, to make Katya think that?

“I love you too,” he said, throat closed tight.

He hung up with every intention of setting an alarm and going to bed. But his laptop was staring at him, the only light in the dark of the room, waiting.

He hit refresh. Switched tab. Did it again.

Waited for it to all fall down.

 

 


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Brian stared down at his screen, trying to understand what he was seeing -- the mild frown on Katya’s face, and the other queen, hands raised, standing just out of frame beyond the gap in the bus bunk curtain.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so this is... long and sad. warnings for unsafe alcohol use and overdrinking; as usual, "she/her" for adore and "he/him" for trixie (brian) and katya. also, this might read a little weird, but i made the executive decision not to name the weho queen who's been giving trixie shit because (contrary to, uh, all other signs, i guess) i don't actually want to speculate on who's a douche and who isn't in the ru girl community. so that's also a thing. 
> 
> (OH, and, there's more lyrics in this one, please don't judge me, it's very hard to try to measure up to trixie's irl songwriting chops lmao)
> 
> this week on honest world: shit's sad. shit's real sad.

*

_FROM: SHEA - 9:57 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_[Attachment: IMG_3782.MOV]_

_Girl._

_If you dont wife her up I will._

 

_FROM: KIM - 10:03 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_holy shit_

_i don’t think i’ve ever seen her mad. like for real_

 

_FROM: SHEA - 10:04 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_This was some WWF shit girl. That bitch will be feeling it for a while._

 

_FROM: KIM - 10:05 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_katya’s from boston. she’s 90% salt, 5% feelings, 5% inner saboteur and 100% ready to fight_

 

_FROM: SHEA - 10:05 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_Thats a lot of math, Kimberley_

 

_FROM: KIM - 10:05 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_are you being racist? don’t be racist shea. omg._

_someone had to count trixie’s tips for her when she was passed out drunk in my bed_

 

_FROM: SHEA - 10:07 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_*Steal trixie’s tips from her._

 

_FROM: SHEA - 10:15 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_Trisha baby if you’re out there we love you girl okay? call us any time xxxx_

 

*

Brian stared down at his screen, trying to understand what he was seeing -- the mild frown on Katya’s face, and the other queen, hands raised, standing just out of frame beyond the gap in the bus bunk curtain.

“You know,” Katya was saying, perfectly conversational, “I found it kind of cute at first? Like a puppy trying to fight itself in the mirror -- or one that can’t, you know. Stop pissing itself. You know what I mean? Funny but sad. But I don’t think I find it funny anymore.”

The other queen laughed nervously. “Come on, Katya --”

“I’m not laughing. Why are you laughing?” said Katya, raising his eyebrows. “I’m not laughing.”

The laughter stuttered into silence. Over the mic, Brian heard Shea expel a slow, cautious breath.

Katya tilted his head, and the expression on his face darkened like a spring storm. “I want to make it really clear to you how far you’ve managed to over-reach yourself, that you’ve actually crossed  _my_  limits. ‘Cause I don’t care how you run things in your club, how you treat your friends, whatever -- that’s none of my business, since I don’t work in your club and I’m not your friend. Oh, in case you hadn’t noticed -- I’m not your friend. FYI. Because you’ve been acting like I am, and I think it’s time for that to stop.”

The raised hands dropped out of sight. “Jesus. Why don’t you tell me how you really feel.”

And  _that_  -- Brian winced despite himself.  _That_  was a mistake.

Katya grinned, showing too many teeth. “Can I? I’d like that, thanks.” He tapped his fingers rapidly against the side of his thigh. “I feel like you’ve gotten a little too comfortable as top dog in your scene, and when Trixie showed up and didn’t line up to eat you out like everyone else does, your ego plummeted out of your  _ass_. And what we’ve been seeing for the past half a year -- can I repeat that? It’s been half a year, which is  _beyond_  pathetic -- what we’ve been seeing is some kind of hemorrhoidal psychosis, as you take obsessive potshots at someone who couldn’t give less of a fuck about you. It’s not just pathetic -- it’s harassment. You’re showing your whole ass right now but guess what, girl? We’ve seen it.”

“You said yourself you’re not in my scene, so don’t talk like you know shit,” the queen snapped back. Her voice tightened like a screw being ground into drywall. “The bitch could have tried to be friendly, for fuck’s sake --”

“You aren’t being very smart right now,” Katya interrupted, with all the force of a tire iron punching through a sheet of glass. “This  _might_  be a good time to consider your word choice, if there ever was one. That would be the smart thing here.” Teeth again, manic. “You want friendly? I can do friendly. We have another week on tour -- you  _want_  me to do friendly. Because the alternative is that I freeze you out, publicly and professionally, and I make your life and your career outside of that fucked up, incestuous bubble of a scene you’ve pissed all over very difficult. Am I -- am I being clear? I want to be very clear. You’ve messed up enough shit in my life, and I want this over with.”

There was a pause and a shift in the shadows beyond the curtain -- nodding.

“Good. So here’s how this is going to go.” A wooden sound,  _rap_ , Katya’s knuckles against the bunk frame. Brian could make out the rise and fall of Katya’s chest, shallow and too fast, in the gap between the curtains. “You don’t post about Trixie. You don’t talk about her. If, God forbid, the opportunity arises, you don’t talk  _to_  her. That last one is for you -- I’m a lover, not a fighter, but it is my strong suspicion that if you pull this to her face one more time, she will beat the ever-loving shit out of you. Just a -- a pro-tip, let’s call it. An insight.”

There was a weak laugh. “She can try it. Jesus, Katya, come the fuck on --”

 _Slam_  -- an open-handed palm against the wood. “Do you think I’m fucking around here? I’m not. Don’t fucking push me on this.”

Brian had heard Katya angry a handful of times in his life. He’d never heard him like this. This wasn’t Katya out of control; this was Katya very near the end of his rope, and aware of every inch he had left, making them count.

The sick feeling in Brian’s stomach crept higher. He pressed his knuckles against his mouth.

“You stop coming for Trixie,” Katya was saying. “No more posts on facebook, no more whispers at shows. No more shit-talking to promoters -- yeah, I asked around, I heard about that. Not that it did you much good. It has to hurt, I think -- does it? Knowing that Trixie’s booking is worth more than your word? That’s gotta sting. But I’m not sure how much of a hold your word even has anymore, you bitter fucking  _cunt_.”

Shea, behind the camera, drew in a shocked breath at the pure vitriol in Katya’s voice.

There was a stillness to the air for a long moment, like the silence after a hurricane has swept the earth bare and ragged. Then the other queen laughed again; louder this time, acidic, but with a definite note of finality -- of defeat.

“If everyone could see you now,” she said.

Katya barked a laugh of his own. “Girl, they wouldn’t care. I’m America’s fucking sweetheart.” He stepped back and waved a hand in the space visible between the curtains; it was shaking finely, Brian could see it. “Get the fuck out of here. I’m not dealing with you today. Call back tomorrow -- I’ll be  _friendly_  again.”

The curtains fluttered as hurried footsteps passed by and receded out of the room, the door to the common lounge sliding open and then shut.

Katya’s shadow shifted. Back and forth, like he was caught up on a decision; then he said, quiet, muffled: “fuck.” Footsteps rang in the opposite direction -- towards, Brian assumed, his own bunk, as there was the fumbling sound of feet on rungs and then the rattle of metal rings as the curtains were pulled shut.

The camera reversed. Shea stared up at it, her eyes filling most of the screen, hilariously wide and scandalized. Then the video went black -- and flicked back to that first still, frozen, the anger on Katya’s face deepening the hollows of his cheeks, his eyes throwing sparks through the screen.

Brian stared down at the rictus of his face, then pressed the phone down screen-first beside him into his mattress. The hard lines of its body bit into the insides of his fingers.

Fuck. What the  _fuck_.

He could stop the video, but he couldn’t make his brain put away the tired lines that had cut into Katya’s face, or the ragged edge of his voice, or how the sound of his palm hitting solid wood had rung through Shea’s bunk, bouncing thickly off the walls.

The room was too small. Brian dragged himself up and went out into the living room, phone in his fist tucked into his pocket, but out there it was too big, and his skin felt all wrong, and he wanted to call Katya but he couldn’t make himself do it.

Katya hadn’t called or texted since the night of the pageant, when Brian had waited and waited all night but the internet -- and that fan in the bar who’d clocked him -- had stayed miraculously silent. Katya hadn’t called, or texted, or tweeted, or even updated his  _fucking_  instagram.

God.

Brian’s phone buzzed suddenly in his pocket and he almost threw it at the balcony doors in his haste to get it out. He fumbled it awake -- and then he saw the name on the screen, and his shoulders slumped again.

_FROM: ADORE - 10:28 AM - Sunday August 24th, 2017_

_I forgot to ask but can u water my plants??? this is the longest ive gone without killing any of them :(_

_LA sucks._

_it’s like *jaws theme* all the time. and i forgot my sunglasses_

He swiped his phone unlocked and read through the texts, mouth twitching feebly towards an almost-smile. It buzzed in his palm again and a picture appeared -- Adore, nose scrunched, squinting into the sky.

Brian typed back,  _i promise, you can definitely afford another pair of sunglasses. and yes, your plants are safe in my hands._

The answer came quickly, every letter infused with the kind of wry snark that Adore was so good at:  _dont make promises my lawyers can’t keep_

Brian huffed a quiet laugh. The sound was swallowed up in the space of the apartment, a small rock dropped in a large lake, not even reaching far enough to touch the walls.

*

Adore had come out the morning after  _that night_  to find him on the couch, his guitar abandoned on the coffee table, staring out into the thin morning light. It wasn't even 7 AM. He’d gotten four or so hours of restless sleep before giving up on it; the room was lit such a soft grey that he might as well have wrapped in a dream anyway. He’d been staring out at the clouds and the inkstain crows flecked along the telephone wires for so long that they’d blurred, like an impressionistic painting -- barely real.

Adore had gone and sat beside him. Then she’d leaned over, carefully, and rested her head on his shoulder. He’d shuddered -- one long wave through his whole body. She was warm. When she breathed her chest expanded against his arm, slow and steady like waves coming into the shore. He’d only been able to bear it for a few minutes before he’d had to get up, fingers twitching at his side; he’d given her an apologetic smile, and she’d watched him walk back to his room with her chin on her wrist, her forearm braced against the back of the couch.

He’d checked twitter one more time, and then fallen into deep, exhausting sleep.

*

“That’ll be thirty-two dollars and forty cents, please,” said the bored young woman behind the till, eyeing his -- genuinely embarrassing -- collection of groceries: ramen noodles, tomato sauce from a jar, the kind of shitty white wine he’d drunk in senior year of college, and stuff to make a salad, out of the idealistic hope that he might actually  _make a salad._

“I’ll just put that on my credit card,” Brian said. He watched her surreptitiously as she entered the amount onto the card reader. Adore had brought him here a few times, but he didn’t recognize her.

“This your first day?” he said, then winced.

“Huh?”

“I mean. Are you new?”

Now she was eyeing him, even less impressed than she’d been by his groceries. “No…”

“Oh.” He ran a hand over his head awkwardly. He’d forgotten his cap at home. “I just, I haven’t seen you here before. I thought…”

Her mouth twitched, and she popped her gum, a sharp  _snap_  in the air. The sound was somehow scornful. “Listen, mister -- I’m working, you know, and even if I weren’t, I don’t go out with the kind of guy that bothers --”

“Oh my god, no,” Brian said, flushing, “Oh my god, no, I’m gay. What? No.”

“Oh,” she said. She started turning red too. “Oh. Shit -- uh, I mean --”

He laughed awkwardly. “Don’t worry about it. Sorry for being, uh, super weird and stuff.”

The lights overhead were the sickly fluorescent yellow of small-time grocery stores everywhere. He could have  _been_  anywhere -- east coast or west, north or south, any timezone, any city, any tour. His shoes squeaked on the floor when he shifted from heel to heel.

How was it less than a week ago that he’d felt so at home in this city he didn’t know at all?

“Your receipt,” the cashier said. She held it out towards him, then hesitated visibly. “Listen, uh… are you okay, man?”

He shrugged, stilted, and took the receipt, then grabbed the bags by their handles. “Oh, you know. More of the same,” he said.

It was awful to realize he meant it.

*

Touring was a little bit like being a ghost in your own body. You were breathing and eating and sleeping, but you might as well have been walking through walls, the way you drifted from place to place, squinting at google maps on your phone, talking to people whose names you’d either forget within five minutes or never knew in the first place. You could be anywhere at all; you might as well be nowhere.

Brian drank shitty wine and played into the night, the notes echoing hollowly across the big empty space of Adore’s living room. Music usually anchored him into his body on the road. Every chord brought him a little closer, the muscles, tendons, bones of his hands all tuned in to the melody with the ease of years. He could close his eyes and wherever he was, he was home.

But each time he opened his eyes again he was someplace new.

Seattle wasn’t a tour stop, but its grey skies, the neighbours he ran into on the staircase, the people he saw in the grocery store -- none of them were home. But,  _fuck_  it, neither was LA, where he spent a few days every month or two and sometimes found himself waking up wondering whose walls he was looking at. And where the fuck did that leave him?

He played a sour note, paused, and corrected himself. Breathed. Tried to bring Emmylou’s lilting refrain back under his fingers.

Without Adore’s voice in the next room livestreaming her way out of boredom, the apartment grew stale and shadowed; without Katya’s calls every night, the days seemed endless, a pale stretch of hours where he did nothing and saw no one. And as each hour ticked past on the clock it became more and more obvious that the veneer of sunshine he’d pasted over Seattle with Adore’s friendly warmth and the sound of Katya’s smile was just that -- a veneer.

Another sour note. He stopped and lay his guitar flat in his lap, then picked up his glass on the coffee table and drained it.

His phone lay still and silent beside the wet ring his glass had left on the wood.

He flicked a bit of lint from the couch off his boxers and took up his guitar again, tracing out the melody that he’d been chasing these past weeks on automatic. The sky outside was ripening, edging into evening. It was almost fall. He’d been in Seattle for three weeks, and it seemed he really hadn’t moved an inch.

He could call Katya. He could suck it the fuck up and call Katya, because maybe Katya was waiting for him to call. Maybe this whole ‘respecting Katya’s space’ thing he was doing was totally misguided, and Katya was waiting beside the phone every minute that he wasn’t out there defending Brian’s honour or whatever  _that_  was.

 _I fucked you up,_  he could say.  _I was so busy pretending that everything was fine now and my problems were gone because they weren’t yelling in my face every two seconds that I didn’t realize I was setting us both up to get hurt. I was so fucking stupid, Katya, and I’m so -- I’m_ so _sorry._

And Katya would say…

What?

 _I just want you to be okay_ _,_  if he was feeling self-sacrificial;  _it’s your irrepressible Virgo energy_ , if he was feeling avoidant. Maybe, maybe,  _I thought you said you didn’t lie to me, and you weren’t going to start_ , if he was feeling particularly honest.

Katya was always honest, more or less. It was just that the truth was flexible, more conversation than monologue, and irony always had to have the last word. Brian, meanwhile, was just a bit of a liar.

Not with Katya, though. Not before. And he hadn’t meant to -- he really hadn’t meant to, not even for a second; it was just --

Fuck.

 _It’s worse than I was letting myself feel,_ Brian could say.  _There’s things I don’t know how to tell you. Because it_ is _about you._

His throat tightened; he let go of the frets. He grabbed for his drink blindly and for his notebook with his other hand. Resting it against the body of his guitar, he opened to a blank page and scrawled,

_You fought yourself to bring all your feelings down to heel,_

_and if you stopped yourself from looking, was it ever really real_

_but everyone's been looking_

_and you --_

Something inside of him was drifting dangerously, thin tethers tied to his ribs all that held it in place, like a threadbare sail on fraying ropes. The words on the page blurred in front of his eyes. He raised his glass to his mouth but the rim bumped against his teeth and nothing came out. Empty.

He frowned down at his cup. Like, fuck  _that_  nonsense. He’d put good money down on those teeth.

The wine sloshing into the glass when he poured himself another sounded like the ocean creeping onto the shore on a windless day. Like Provincetown -- another place he’d gone to hide; another town full of strangers. He set the bottle back on the table, cap off, and picked up his guitar again.

*

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday he went running in the morning like nothing had changed. Before, Adore would be waking up when he got back; one of them would make breakfast, then they’d jam for a while, and then Adore would smoke up and Brian would text Katya, if he hadn’t already done so.

Now Brian just jogged. Further and further each day, until Thursday found him running along the seaside, pounding the pavement with salt stinging the inside of his mouth on every inhale. The sky was a soft feather blue, the ocean a deep silk bedsheet wavering in his peripheral vision -- and then the mass of Pike Place rose up in front of him. Before he could think about it, his feet were carrying him inside; past the florists, past the bursting orange and red arrays of fresh fruit, and down the stairs to the magic shop’s door.

He wiped the sweat off his forehead with the collar of his tank top, grimaced, then pushed the door open and stepped inside.

It was just-opened quiet on the floor. No customers, no music; just a vague shuffling from behind the counter. “Just a minute,” the shuffler called. “If this accursed speaker breaks on me one more time…”

There was a crackling sound from the speakers set high in the walls, like a cheap firework skidding along cement, and then a whole storm of swearing below the counter.

“Uh,” Brian said. He approached cautiously. “Can I take a look? I might be able to help.”

“No, it’s really fine --” A frazzled head popped up from behind the register. “Oh! It’s you! I know you. You think you can fix it? The damn thing goes off all the time, the wiring’s too old --”

Brian shrugged. “I work in clubs and theatres and stuff, so I’ve picked up a thing or two. Let me see.”

Steph -- that was her name, he remembered -- was as curly-haired and strangely-dressed as when they’d met, with a sprig of rosemary tucked behind the large crow-shaped brooch pinned to her blouse and dust all over her knees. He crouched down beside her and squinted at the mess of wires and cords, poking a hesitant finger around and hoping he wouldn’t get fried. That sound had  _not_  been good.

“I think,” he said after a minute, “I think it’s this. Hang on. I’m gonna -- if I die, tell my momma I loved her, and tell my dad --” he ducked further under the desk. “Well, whatever you like, if you can find him.”

She barked a laugh behind him.

He didn’t die, although he did burn his fingers a little bit, and when the music started playing (some kind of witchy Swedish wailing, possibly Bjork, Katya -- Katya would know --) he let out a “Hah!” of triumph. Eat  _that_ , three years on the road and four years of theatre school and thousands of dollars funnelled directly into the University of Wisconsin’s incredibly deep pockets. Eat the shit out of that.

Steph helped him out with two hands around his forearm, shaking him delightedly once he was more or less standing. “You’re a miracle worker,” she said with a bright smile. “I should hire you on the spot, because clearly you’re the real magic here.”

He wiped the sweat off his forehead with his free arm and grinned down at her. Clear bright light was streaming through the high windows in the walls, glinting off her brooch, her earrings, the silver in her hair. Her smile and easy warmth was the same as it had been before, and,  _god_ , that was nice. “I’ve got greasepaint coming out of ears,” he said, shrugging modestly. “You can’t really call yourself a theatre kid until you’ve nearly died a dozen different ways trying to string up the speakers on the janitor’s old ladder. ”

“Different  _ways_?”

He waved a hand. “You know, falling, electrocution -- so boring. A good old-fashioned garrotte is where it’s at.”

Her eyes scrunched at the corners when she laughed. “I like you,” she said, grinning, “you’re strange,” and he grinned back, feeling lighter than he had all week.

“I don’t know what you mean,” he said. Then: “Oh, hey, the book you sold me is great. Who knew reading about the end of the world could make you feel  _better_  about life?”

“That’s right, the apocalypse poems, you...” Steph said, then paused. “God, I’m so sorry, I don’t remember your name. But you’re Danny’s friend, right?”

Brian blinked. Swallowed.

“Yeah,” he said; it came out forced, like he was overcompensating for something. “Yeah, sorry, it’s Brian. Yeah. I took some time off work and I’ve been staying with Danny.”

“Oh, do you work together?” she said, brightly and obliviously twisting the knife. “I know he does something or other with clubs and theatres and whatnot too. He’s very private about those things, but such a sweetheart. I haven’t seen him around in a while, though, how he is?”

“Away on business,” Brian said, “and, you know, we’ve been keeping busy otherwise. I’ll tell him you asked.” He wiped his palms against the sides of his shorts. “Listen, I actually -- I should probably be going, actually. I’m supposed to be skyping him in about half an hour.”

An absolute lie, but Steph swallowed it without a flicker of suspicion. She smiled and pressed a hand to his arm. “Tell him I send my love. And thanks again for your help, Brian. I don’t know how many more shocks my old heart could take.”

“Oh stop,” he said, chuckling, and gave a little wave. “See you around, I guess?”

The polite small talk of strangers. Preferable to a slow death, but not by, like, a  _lot_.

Brian took the stairs back up to the ground level slowly, although his heart rate was well back to normal by this point. He wandered out of the arcade, and turned, and walked, and turned, and then he was on a raised dock, leaning against a wooden rail next to a locked gate, which guarded the ramp down to the boats. The wood pressed into the front of his ribs. He curled his palms around the rail, ignoring the bite of splinters.

A light breeze ruffled his shirt and cooled his pink cheeks. The ocean stretched out before him, golden sunshine catching in the crests and troughs of the waves.

He closed his eyes.

*

At home, he typed,  _i hope you’re doing okay. i love you._

Deleted it.

Typed,  _today someone didnt recognize me and THAT made me sad. i think i need an intervention._

Deleted it.

Typed,  _went to the beach to sea what all the commocean was about but idk im still not shore_

Deleted it.

Sighed, stared out the window, looked down at his feet.

Typed,  _i’m sorry. katya, i’m so sorry._

Deleted it.

*

_“You’re so white from these shadowed winter months,” Katya crowed, shielding his eyes dramatically. “I don’t know if I can be seen with you.”_

_“You’re real white from being born, you know, caucasian and unfortunate, but I’ve suffered your company for years,” said Brian. He frowned and wiped at his nose where something wet was dripping -- sweat or sunscreen, he didn’t know. “If you really can’t bear it, I’m sure I can find one of these tanned, strapping, oiled-up hunks of meat who’d be willing to walk with me --”_

_Katya grabbed his arm mid-gesture. “No no no, don’t you dare!”_

_“I’m just saying,” Brian continued, “_ you _invited_ me _, bitch --”_

_The shine of Katya’s grin, open-mouthed and laughing, was enough to blow his whole awful night out of the water._

_They walked. The sun drew rippling air waves out of the too-hot cement; the ocean crashed beautifully green into the white shore. But it somehow wasn’t too crowded, for all that it was the dead of summer, the very peak of beach days. They moved in blissful anonymity. At one point, Katya bought him an ice cream. Brian ate it one-handed, making panicked noises and laughing as it dripped closer and closer to his hand. His other hand was -- well. He’d taken Katya’s as they stood waiting for the cone, and he hadn’t let go yet. His stomach flipped giddily every time their steps fell out of sync -- their palms would drag against each other, just for a moment, each time making him newly aware again of the calluses on Katya’s palm._

_He traced his index finger along the big tendon on the back of Katya’s hand, and Katya glanced at him sideways, quick, lips parting on a short intake of breath. Brian licked at his ice cream and said nothing, warm and smug all over._

_Sea breeze and the sting of salt. They leaned over the wooden rail, right into it, shoulders and hips pressed together. The blue stretched endless._

_Katya started to turn red in the cheeks around four so they ducked for shade. Brian slouched back against the blush pink wall of some souvenir shop, under the awning, and Katya stood in front of him to block the sun from his eyes. One moment Brian was looking over Katya’s shoulder at the white gulls darting and dipping over the sea; the next, he was blinking up, and Katya was closer, leaning in, one hand on the wall beside his head, his gaze flickering over Brian’s face with the same combination of lazy ease and breathless flight as the birds in the air._

_Brian blinked, processing, then licked his lips to wet them. “Feeling tall?” he said._

_“Feeling lots of things,” said Katya, smiling faintly. “Tall may or may not be one of them. No one’s ever accused me of a Napoleon complex, Tracy -- and my psychological rap sheet is longer than the Mariana Trench. You always take me to new and exciting places, did you know that? That’s why we’re friends.”_

_“I thought it was for the free therapy and life coaching.”_

_“Don’t undersell yourself, mama. What’s newer or more exciting than uncertified therapy and dubious life coaching?”_

_Brian laughed. “I don’t know that ‘new’ and ‘exciting’ are words that many people have applied to me -- out of drag, at least.” His mouth twitched. “You might be du-biased.”_

_He expected Katya to throw back his head, lean away and laugh, but instead -- Katya leaned closer, his eyes glinting with mirth. “I’m gonna kill you,” he said, “I’m gonna kill you right here and dump your body into the ocean in front of the tourists, God, and everybody, and no one will punish me when they hear about the years of pun-spewing_ bullshit _you’ve put me through.”_

_He was so close. Brian’s stomach flipped again; he could feel Katya’s warmth all along him, make out the freckles on his nose. “Kill me?” he said, mouth dry._

_Katya blinked. Something about the set of his jaw, the small lines around his eyes, seemed suddenly vulnerable, intense and somehow opened wide._

_“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “Or, I dunno. Maybe that other thing.”_

_Brian held his breath. All he could hear was the crashing of the waves, loud and close -- or maybe that was the sound of his heartbeat in his ears. He reached up and brushed the tips of his fingers along the sharp line of Katya’s cheek._

_Katya’s chest hitched._

_The breeze chased the sunlight through the empty pier, stirring the sand across the wood, and Katya leaned in, slow enough that Brian could stop him if he wanted. Brian didn’t. He lifted his face, eyes slipping shut; and Katya’s mouth fell on the corner of his, once, soft, then warm against his right cheekbone, and again on his left. Brian exhaled shakily._

_“What,” he said, unsteady. “Can’t kiss me when the cameras aren’t on?”_

_Katya huffed a laugh, the breath warm on Brian’s face. He curled a hand below Brian’s ribs; his fingers dipped into the hollow in his tank top to brush against bare skin. Brian shivered. Voice barely louder than the wind in the distance, Katya said, “My life would be so much simpler if that were true.”_

_Brian opened his eyes. He looked up and met Katya’s gaze, and his mouth twitched, almost a smile. Katya’s stubble scratched at his fingertips as he settled his palm more firmly along the curve of his jaw. “Well, you’re not really a_ simple _woman,” Brian said, and Katya was laughing when he leaned down and kissed him properly._

_When he opened his eyes, the sun’s lowest rays had dipped below the edge of the awning, lighting Katya up in gold, and he tipped his head back to rest against the wall, wrapped his free arm around Katya’s waist, and said, “Come home with me.”_

Except that’s not what happened at all.

When he opened his eyes, the sun was shining, and Katya was lit with gold, and he tipped his head back against the wall and thought about saying it --

\-- then smiled crookedly, and said instead, “You kiss like you have heat stroke.” And Katya threw back his head and laughed, wheezed, “no, just heat rash,” while the sun caught in his hair and lashes.

It’s not what happened, but it could have been. He could have taken Katya home, and pressed him up against the hallway inside his door, all that sun-warm skin under his hands. He could have kissed him the way he wanted to. He could have blown him right there with his knees sore against the hardwood, or taken his hand again and drawn him back into the bedroom, kissing him all the way. And after -- Brian could have asked him to stay.

That wasn’t how it happened, but, crashed out on the couch in Seattle after his run, Brian dreamed every moment of it. Every inch of hot skin and the rasp of sheets and falling asleep together and waking up together. And when he woke up -- alone -- he pressed his hands flat against his stomach, feeling like something had been taken  _out_  of him. Feeling ill, feeling exhausted, feeling like his head was buzzing and his mind was five feet outside of his body.

Eventually he dragged himself up and fumbled for his phone. He wiped at the inner corners of his eyes with his knuckle as he thumbed it awake; then he pressed his palm over his face, exhaling shakily.

No new messages. Of course.

His whole body hummed feverishly, the twinned effect of the sun on his morning run and the one in his dream. Maybe that was what fucked over his self-control, that sick feeling like he was out of his head, or maybe he was just giving in to the inevitable -- but, whatever it was, he opened his messages and, despite all his better judgement, typed out:  _check in?_

Hating himself a little, he hit send.

When there was no response thirty minutes later, despite the  _read_  receipt that had popped up almost immediately, he left to go find something to drink.

*

“Oh hey, it’s you,” said the girl behind the counter. She eyed his purchases. “Wow. I didn’t think it could get sadder than last time…”

Brian huffed a short laugh. “Still gay, don’t worry.”

“Uh huh,” she said. She ran the first wine bottle -- yes,  _first_ , thanks so much -- under the scanner and hit a few buttons. “So is the whole sad and gay deal an aesthetic thing? How much Lana have you listened to in the past three days? I’m trying to decide if I should be staging an intervention that I’m -- full disclosure -- not really qualified for.”

“Do sad gays get a discount at this establishment?”

“Nope,” she said, popping it like bubblegum. “Sorry.”

She finished ringing him, his three bottles of wine, his pack of sour key candies, and his thoroughly depleted dignity through the machine.

“Credit,” he said, offering it over.

He was threading his hands through the bag handles, waiting for his card back, when she said, “Hey. What’s your name, man?”

He blinked. “It says on the card.”

“Yeah, whatever,” she said, handing it over wrapped in his receipt with an eye-roll. “So what is it?”

“Brian,” he said, and looked at the sallow lights on her face, wondering where she was going with this.

“Brian,” she repeated. “Hi, Brian, I’m Mariam.”

Her tone was conversational but somehow serious, weighted, and Brian -- Brian swallowed against the sudden and unexpected feeling of his throat going tight.

“Now who’s hitting on who?” he managed, and she chuckled, but didn’t lose that look in her eyes.

“Brian. Take care of yourself, hey?” she said.

The lights glared brightly across the empty floor, the rows upon rows of no-name brands and the scuff marks on the shitty linoleum. She was watching Brian like maybe he  _needed_  watching. He swallowed again, and nodded, and left without another word.

*

Dust motes floated in the slowly draining sunlight when he returned to the apartment. The whole space of it echoed with the closing of the door. He kicked off his shoes, cracked open the first bottle, and went to get his guitar, glass in hand.

Hours passed. He drank more. He scribbled in his notebook, crossed things out, scrawled corrections in the margins. There was too much in his head. Words tumbled out like a hole had been torn somewhere, all the loose change and lint of his brain escaping despite his best efforts to plug the gap. His writing got sloppier, slanted; he wiped wine from his mouth with the back of his hand and turned the page.

The beach, the dream, the night before. The months of build-up, the moment of release. Wanting, wanting, he wanted  _so much_  and he had told himself, when he was a kid, that someday he would be able to have all the things he wanted. If he was smart enough and good enough, quick enough on his feet, he could make anything happen. But here he was: trapped into stillness as the path under his feet cut off abruptly. Because how could he have all the things he wanted when they existed at such cross-purposes?

Or was it just him? Not the fame, not the fans, not the industry, and certainly not Katya -- maybe it was Brian at cross-purposes with all of it, putting himself in his own way, selfish and stubborn and cowardly, refusing to accept with good grace what the universe was offering him.

The sun dipped below the blocky Seattle skyline, the buildings across the road cast in radiant red, as he stumbled into the kitchen to open the third bottle. His hands slipped on the cap; he blinked wearily down at it, then out the window at the purples and pinks of the sky, dappled and streaked like watercolours. The sun was just a winking and burnished glare over the lip of the buildings. He inhaled deeply and it almost seemed like he could still taste salt in the air.

The skyline blurred before his eyes, replaced by the memory of the things his dream had omitted. Walking the long way back down the pier, Katya with one arm hooked around his elbow and the other hand clutching at his bicep like an ingenue, twitching with laughter every minute or so because apparently this was the most heterosexual he’d ever felt. Which, Katya had definitely licked at  _least_  one pussy in his day, so. What he meant was probably that it was dumb, and romantic, and brought them so much closer together than held hands as they made their way between the shadows of the tall lights that lined the boardwalk. The sun set in brilliant gold in the distance. Brian remembered the warmth of Katya’s chest against his arm; he remembered looking at Katya’s lips, then away, and wash, rinse, repeat; he remembered the sign they passed, jutting up out of the middle of the boardwalk: END OF THE TRAIL.

He remembered going home alone, flushed and giddy with the heat of the day, and turning on his phone to see a new notification from his facebook messages.  _date night tracy?_ , it said, captioning a photo of him and Katya on the boardwalk, arm in arm, the soft look on his face all too bare in the deep amber light of the sun setting over the ocean.

Brian shook his head, and poured himself another drink.

The night after that was all in flashes. His fingers sliding along the strings of his guitar. Losing his pen under the couch; hunting through Adore’s drawers for another one. Sweet sad notes filling the room, lingering in the air like sea salt. Fumbling with his phone; his guitar; his own hands.

 _Love’s the kind of feeling that’s not easy to derail_ _,_  that was good, that was fine,  _but I find that I’ve been tryin’ ‘cause_ , ‘cause what, ‘cause  _what --_

He lost another pen. After that... he didn’t remember much after that.

*

Brian woke to a splitting headache and a buzzing phone.

The phone was on his stomach; his head was on the arm of the couch. He blinked into the bright morning light and groaned, covering his eyes.

His phone buzzed again.

Whatever it was, it could fucking wait. He let it fall to the side as he rolled over, taking in the mess of paper and pens -- what the fuck, where did he get so many pens -- on the coffee table, the empty wine bottles, his guitar abandoned carelessly on the floor. The glass doors to the balcony were open, though he didn’t remember opening them, and the harsh cawing of the crows outside made his eyes water.

Jesus  _fucking_ Christ.

He stood unsteadily and made his way to the kitchen, where a bag of sour key candies lay splayed open and empty on the counter and a plate with the mysterious remnants of what might be a drunken midnight snack lay beside the sink. He stared at one, then the other, then turned decisively to get a glass out of the cupboards and fill it from the tap. He downed it in one go and poured himself another.

Back by the couch, his phone was buzzing again.

 _Katya_ , he realized through the groggy fullness in his head.  _That could be Katya._

He returned to the couch and lowered himself gingerly, full glass clutched in one hand. He fumbled the phone trying to grab it, which probably said bad things about the balance of alcohol to water in his system at that moment; then he thumbed it awake and scanned it as quickly as he could through the low-burning nausea of his hangover.

There was, in fact, a notification from Katya. A missed call at 2:23 AM. Brian’s heart leapt and his mouth went dry; but then he looked past that, at the avalanche of notifications from twitter and instagram, and his whole body turned cold, shoved into full wakefulness and unholy sobriety.

What the fuck had  _happened_  last night?

He unlocked his phone and opened instagram to see notifications in the thousands. Thumbing over to his profile, he found a post he didn’t remember making, dated 1:57 AM. That was -- he looked at the little clock at the top of his screen: 7:13 AM -- barely five hours before. The little thumbnail showed his shoulders over his guitar; when he opened it, he saw it was a video.

Brian stared at the post in horror for a long moment. Then -- because there was literally no other choice -- he flexed his fingers, which had gone numb, and he hit play.

The screen cut to his face, frowning blearily and too close, as he tried to prop his phone up. He looked -- exhausted. Shit. Dark circles under his eyes, a tight, stressed set to his mouth, which twisted down as he failed to make the phone stand steady a third time. Finally he -- the Brian on screen -- muttered a sharp  _fuck_ , and just leaned the phone back against something or other, putting his glass of wine in front of it to hold it upright, so the rim blurred out the bottom of the frame.

He stepped back, sat down, and pulled his guitar into his lap.

Brian, the Brian watching, took shallow breaths against a rising nausea. His pulse thrummed loudly under the thin skin of his neck.

The camera captured the body of his guitar, the slouch of his shoulders, and part of his mouth, which he wiped at with the back of his hand, pick balanced easily between his fingers. Then he sat up straighter, squaring his shoulders and sliding his other hand up the neck of the guitar into place -- Brian remembered that, cool smooth wood under his palm, he remembered glancing at the camera and thinking  _fuck it, fuck_  this --

The Brian on screen played an open chord and then set into the melody that made up the verses, the tumbling notes, middle finger -- pinky finger -- ring finger, and, watching, his brain cut through the fog to focus on that, ring finger, ring finger, the song he’d been working on all this past month coming together despite the drunken way he slid between the metal frets.

And then he started to sing, and Brian went from feeling slightly nauseous to being absolutely certain he was about to throw up.

It wasn’t the verses, thank god. Not the harried scribbles that filled pages upon pages in his notebook, most of them awful, all of them never to be fucking revealed to the world at large because they were his, ugly and sincere and too personal. All the moments that made him want to try; all the things that made him afraid. But this --

_“Love’s the kind of feeling that’s not easy to derail_

_But I find that I’ve been trying ‘cause_

_I can’t see the when and where --”_

A chorus is a vague thesis; but, watching, he still felt stripped wholly bare.

_“I hear waves in my dreams at night,_

_Feel the sunlight and your stare,_

_So maybe it’s to no avail --_

_And maybe ‘stay’ won’t turn out stale --”_

Brian swallowed, fumbled for his glass of water, tried to hear anything but the roaring in his ears, see anything but his face dipping into frame as he bent lower over the guitar, eyes closed, face pained as he sang  _stay_. And he was sliding through the notes like a drunk stumbling through a door, graceless but functional and -- worst of all -- far too honest.

_“But I still don’t know if I can go_

_Off-road at the end of the trail.”_

Fuck.

The video didn’t end abruptly -- apparently, when drunk, he couldn’t make the crop function work for him -- but with an agonizing slowness, the last, aching note from his guitar hanging hollowly in the air. His shoulders on-screen rose, then fell; then finally he reached forward for his phone. A flash of his mouth, his cheek, his eyes squinting -- and then it went dark, and looped back to the beginning.

He jabbed at the screen to stop it, and stared down at his phone in mute horror, jaw slack and mouth dry.

First things first, he deleted the video. It wouldn’t shut people up, but he couldn’t just let it  _sit_ there, all of him laid out in the bare daylight. The raw sound of his voice, scratchy with exhaustion, on his shitty phone mic; that one glimpse of his face, like opening a door you’re not supposed to by accident, the kind of door you can’t close again or back away from. All a room’s quiet secrets, the small ones that cut deepest, framed starkly by the open doorframe.

He wasn’t going to load twitter, or look at the texts that had come in from his friends who’d seen, but then a new one appeared at the top of his screen as his phone buzzed in his hand. It was Shea -- a youtube link. His phone buzzed again with a second message, a third, more, all from Shea. He thumbed messenger open, still numb all the way through, and scanned the group chat dispassionately. Then he stopped, and read it again.

_FROM: SHEA - 7:17 AM - Friday August 29th, 2017_

_youtube.com/watch?v=Jf1L34kn0_

_Please watch this, get your collective shit together, and stop making me feel sad for both of you_

_Ive got better shit to do with my time_

_And PLEASE reach out to us, jesus, brian, we care so much and i know youre doing your own thing but we’re really, really worried._

_Well. I cant speak for kim. Im worried; that bitch is probably just hungry_

He huffed a laugh, but it didn’t feel like one. It felt like something was cracking open inside of him.

His phone buzzed again.

_FROM: KIM - 7:18 AM - Friday August 29th, 2017_

_i can be hungry and worried at the same time cunt_

_but sheas not wrong, bri._

_please._

Brian swallowed, then swallowed again, throat tight and eyes stinging. He took another gulp of his water, then, after a moment’s hesitation, typed,  _i’m here. i’ll watch it in a minute. i love you guys and im sorry_

He wasn’t sure what he was sorry for. There was a whole laundry list of reasons he should be; he might as well cover his bases.

It wasn’t -- it wasn’t that he’d been wrong to leave. It wasn’t that he’d been wrong to want out or to go silent. It was just that it could be right for him and wrong for them, and he could be sorry for that, even if he wasn’t sure yet that he regretted it.

He hit send all the same.

His phone buzzed almost instantly with their replies, but he didn’t look, pulling up the youtube link instead. Then: for the second time that morning, his heart stopped and his body went cold.

 _“help me i’m not dying fast enough”,_  said the title under the loading video.  _“Katya Zamolodchikova Periscope (August 29, 2017 @ 2:40 AM)”._

He didn’t want to click -- he knew he didn’t want to, and also that he  _shouldn’t_  -- but he did anyway, because sometimes he was a masochist like that. Lately, especially.

Katya, on-screen, stubbed out a cigarette and lit another one, inhaling deeply.

“I’m not going to tell you how many of these I’ve had tonight,” he said to the camera. “Because it’s none of your business what hell cycle of ideating and ovulating I may or may not be going through right now. That’s first of all.”

He looked… gaunt. Unkempt. Worse than in the video Shea had taken a week earlier.

“It’s a funny thing, to have -- kind of -- resolved myself to wanting something, and always having it sort-of in reach, and then to realise maybe I can’t have it at all. I could have, but maybe I missed my moment, maybe I didn’t lay out my thesis convincingly enough -- maybe maybe maybe. Maybe what I wanted isn’t on the proverbial table anymore. That’s harder, I think, than knowing all along you can’t ever have it. It’s a different kind of wanting. I don’t know.”

He flicked his fingers in the air by his ear, ash falling grey and soft like snow from a rooftop.

“I’ve never been good at wanting things. That’s funny, right? From an addict, I mean. It’s funny. You can laugh -- I’m laughing. Maybe you are, I don’t know, I can’t see you. I don’t care.

I’ve never been good at wanting things -- I’ve had them, or not had them. It all seemed kind of --” he paused, then laughed, a hoarse bark. “You know, insignificant in the face of the rapid decay of the environment, our bodies, society as a whole, and ultimately the universe itself. The universe is dying, by the way, in case you hadn’t heard. I took a first year physics class, girl, so I know what I’m talking about.”

 _You read Neil Degrasse Tyson’s book once, you fucking idiot_ _,_  Brian thought; it rung hollow, as if it came from someplace a good distance from his own body.

“So I’ve never been good at wanting stuff. Drugs isn’t want, drugs is need. And that’s not -- I know I look like a mess right now, but a) not on drugs, and b) still not about need. I’m not in some kind of I’ll-die-without-you pseudo-love psycho-abusive Nicholas Sparks kinda  _bullshit_. I’m just -- I’m just sad. I’m just really fucking sad. And I’ll delete this tomorrow, and anyway --” Katya looked sharply into the camera, and for a moment, Brian felt  _seen_  -- “I figure it’s only fair.”

“So anyway,” Katya continued. He turned away, towards the road; his eyes lit up with amber streetlight, glass-green and shadowed. “We’re all dying. I know, Brenda, I’m a broken record over here about it, but we’re all  _dying_ , and that’s kind of a big deal. And I  _love_  it! In some strange, existential way, it’s liberating, it’s electrifying, it brings you closer to your own body and soul and maybe even God, if, I don’t know, that’s your thing sometimes -- ‘your’ being mine -- but then --”

He stopped himself. Brian watched as his fingers tapped frenetically against the side of his cigarette for a moment, then he raised it, pursed his mouth, inhaled. Exhaled. He lifted his face to watch the smoke rise and disappear.

When he looked back down, he was smiling, crooked at the edges, like it hurt. “But then something comes into your life, and suddenly, it’s like, wait. Hang on. I want to see more of  _that_  -- let’s stop the death train, maybe. Let’s put a hold on this dying shit. Because whatever it is I’m feeling, I  _want that_ , and -- and -- and why the fuck am I wasting time killing myself when this has been here, maybe all along. Self-indulgent fatalism suddenly starts to feel -- selfish.”

“I mean,” he interrupted himself, suddenly and obviously changing tacks as a thought struck him, “please still come to my show. It’ll be so good. All these questions and more will be addressed -- not answered, because who cares about answers, but asked? Yes. More questions than you ever wanted. Please come.”

He flashed a smile, plastic-white, but it melted away too quickly into the same tired pallor.

“I don’t know. I don’t even know if anything I’m saying is true. I want all sorts of things all the time, but it’s always a little bit -- intellectual. Like, wow, I wonder what having that would be like? Feel like? I’ve never experienced this kind of wanting that doesn’t have an  _endpoint_  -- it won’t just stop once I get it. It goes forward. It has a  _future_. What the fuck is up with that, you know?

But it’s not -- you don’t just get to  _have_  things.”

His voice cracked.

“No. Okay. One second,” he said, and then he disappeared around the camera. Brian could still hear him breathing, though, quiet in the night air, an eerie echo of so many phone calls over the past month.

When Katya returned, he lit himself another cigarette, and this one didn’t shake between his fingers. “I'm going to delete this the minute it ends, for the record. I don’t know why I’m even doing it. I guess I’m just lonely. I know, I’ve been on tour, and that’s great, but -- I dunno. It’s lonely. Work is lonely. Dying is lonely. And there’s one thing I want and I thought I could have it but -- turns out -- I probably can’t, and that’s -- that’s lonely too.”

His mouth twisted, an almost-smile.

“I always thought that was such a cliché: to feel alone in the middle of a crowded room. And I love a cliché when it’s not played straight, but. Maybe, sometimes, the crowd doesn’t matter when one person’s not in it.

Anyway. I’m doing a lot of whining for someone with not a lot of problems, comparatively. And this problem isn’t even really mine. Not at its core. Selfish, right? But hey -- no one’s making  _you_  tune in, Elizabeth.”

He took a final, decisive drag on his cigarette.

“Okay. I’m gonna go listen to some ambient noise and try to sleep.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Ocean sounds, track four: a classic. Yeah. Yeah, okay. Bye.”

The streetlight blanketing his face in fragile white, he looked into the screen again, directly, as if he could see Brian there looking back at him, heart sore in his throat. Then the video went dark.

Brian sat and stared down at the phone in his hands. Between the low buzzing nausea of his hangover and the Seattle morning greyness, the world around him felt -- distant. Not quite real. Not as real or as close as that twitch of Katya’s mouth, or the wry, exhausted humour in his voice. The frustration and sadness and longing in every line of his body. 

They were both so stupid. And so  _fucked._

He tapped out of Safari and into his messages, where he typed again,  _check in?_

Knees tucked into his chest, he waited, and a minute later the reply came in -- the little OK emoji, thumb pinched to index finger.

He exhaled loudly and pressed his hand over his eyes.

The phone buzzed against his thigh a moment later and he looked down again. It wasn’t from Shea or Kim like he thought it might be -- it was, unexpectedly, another text from Katya. All it said was:  _you?_

He bit his lip, thinking about it. He wasn’t going to let himself lie, to himself, to Katya, not again. He wasn’t going to do that to them. But the honest answer was -- yes. He wasn’t good. He wasn’t better. But he was okay, for all the values of okay that the check-in had meant since the first time Katya had needed it: I’m alive, I’m safe, I’m here.

 _Yeah_ , he typed and sent,  _that's about right._

He looked up from his phone at a sudden noise beyond the front door -- a  _thump_ , like something heavy had been dropped.

It could have been one of Adore’s neighbours, so he dragged himself up and started to walk over, ready to offer assistance if needed. The woman upstairs was older, and generally bought more groceries than she could carry. But as he was approaching the door he heard the scrape of a key in the lock, and then the handle began to turn.

Adore wasn’t supposed to be back until that evening.

“Hello?” he started to ask, but then the door swung open, and he was staring into a pair of very tired, very startled eyes that  _definitely_  weren’t Adore’s.

“What the fuck,” said Bianca del Rio.

To his own surprise, a burst of laughter punched out of Brian’s stomach. “Yeah,” he said, staring back at Bianca, at the douchey sneakers on his feet, the Shangela shirt he was wearing, and the small duffel he’d dropped behind him. Brian found himself smiling, just a little. “Same.”

 

 

 


	6. (interlude: the whole world folding over)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> L.A. is always the eye of the storm. Adore, in a mess of a lawsuit, runs into Katya, in a mess of her own making.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (a brief interlude; an even briefer encounter)

 

_of all the times i’ve settled in my life,_  Adore typed on her way out of the office,  _this? has to be the worst_

The text flew out, New-York-bound. Adore threw the doors open with equivalent force, stepping out into afternoon L.A. heat with a swagger that was more hangover than bravado.  _Porque no los_  fuckin’  _dos_ , though, right? She brushed her hair out of her eyes and squinted down at her phone, at the three little dots dancing with an impending response. 

She had time. She switched her water bottle to her phone-hand to free up the other, and dug around in her pocket for a joint and a lighter as she ducked into the alleyway beside the Producer Entertainment offices. The lighter was nowhere to be found; the joint she stuck in her mouth, just in time for her phone to buzz. 

_FROM: BIANX - 1:43 PM - Tuesday August 26th, 2017_

_Who do i gotta beat up?_

Adore huffed a laugh through her nose. 

_Chillaxxxx,_  she typed.  _Not worst. Just longest._

A breeze curled through the alley; she leaned back against a wall in the shadow of an overhanging fire escape, where the sun couldn’t reach her. She patted at her pockets for her lighter, but without much hope of finding it. She knew herself. If it wasn’t sunk at the bottom of the hotel pool after a unnoticed fall from her balcony, she’d eat her own dick. 

Her phone buzzed again. 

_FROM: BIANX - 1:44 PM - Tuesday August 26th, 2017_

_How much longer are you in LA?_

Twitching her water bottle between her ring and middle fingers, she typed back:  _friday if they don’t learn to compromise and u know they wont. fuckin kindergarten ass douche juicers._

“Oh,” someone said from the mouth of the alley. 

Adore looked up and her jaw dropped – only a rapid fumble saving her joint from the ground. “Holy shit,” she said, “holy shit, hey.”

Katya – in full drag, the sun gleaming on her blonde hair from behind like a halo – beamed. 

“Holy shit is right,” she said. “Come here, fuck, give me a fucking hug. My arms are empty. They knew not how empty they were.”

Adore tucked her joint behind her ear and her phone into her pocket as she came out of her hideout to wrap her arms around Katya’s frame, squeezing tight. Katya was all muscle and bone; she smelled like hairspray and she clung back just as tightly – tighter. 

“Oh honey,” she said when she pulled back. “Oh honey, oh  _honey_  – oh, hey, love the accessory. Very  _fash-ion_ ,” she lisped in a french accent, poking at the joint behind Adore’s ear. 

“Be more than an accessory if I hadn’t lost my lighter to the  _depths_ , dude,” Adore said, which definitely made no sense, but Katya took it at face value. 

“Well that’s no good. Here,” she said, and handed Adore her own phone, water bottle, and a pair of sunglasses with brims made up of what looked like real actual teeth. “Oh,  _awesome_ ,” Adore said; Katya hummed agreement, then pulled a lighter and a joint of her own out of one of the ten pockets on her dress with a loud  _a-ha!_

“This is what life should be about,” she said, sticking her own joint in her mouth like a cigarette and talking around it as she flicked the lighter in front of her face, “Sisters helping sisters.” She inhaled, waited, then exhaled dramatically, smoke billowing from her mouth. “God, that’s good. Here.”

Adore stuck her joint back in her mouth and leaned close. 

“Fuck, yeah,” she said on her own first exhale. 

Katya hacked a laugh that went on, and on, and was more scream than noise by the end of it, face scrunched. Then, when she got her wits back around her, said, “Isn’t life great?” and set herself off again. 

Up close, it was obvious how thick her makeup was caked under her eyes, foundation and concealer and highlights all stacked up against what had to be some truly monstrous shadows. You didn’t go through life as an insomniac drag queen without learning the signs. Her cheeks were hollow and the skin around her nails, when she brought the joint back up to her mouth, was yellowed. 

She caught Adore looking and her mouth twitched crookedly up at the corners. “Sometimes you gotta indulge one bad habit to stave off another,” she said, then her eyes went wide. “Fuck. I told Fena I wouldn’t smoke up in her wigs again.  _Fuck_.”

The joint was thrust at Adore; then Katya was tugging her wig carefully off, revealing nylon and a hint of bare skin at the temples. She sighed down at the wig, like it had disappointed her, then hung it carefully off a jutting bar on the fire escape overhead. 

Adore handed her joint back to her, then brought her own back to her lips. She looked Katya over – blonde hair creeping past the edge of the nylon; red lipstick creeping past the edge of her lip liner; the dress; the heels. 

“You filming?” Adore said. 

Katya met her eyes, then looked away. She twitched her shoulders. “Some very expensive and life-like suits wanted to meet before they asked me for a screen test.”

Adore hummed. Inhaled and waited for the burn; exhaled slowly. 

Katya looked down. “God. This fucking… sucks.”

“Yeah,” Adore agreed. 

Katya’s fingers twitched at her side, then she looked up and met Adore’s eyes. “This is fucking shitty. Me, being here – all of this, this whole fucking – just fucking  _everything_. It sucks. I’m so sorry.”

Adore shook her head. “‘S not  _your_  fault.”

“Still.”

Adore’s phone buzzed – not a text from Bianca, she saw when she pulled it out, but from her lawyers. Five minute warning. 

“I gotta go,” she sighed. She looked back up at Katya to find her watching with wide, intent eyes, eerily still. 

“I – yeah,” Katya said. Then her mouth twisted and she burst out, “Have you – has Trixie texted you? I –” she bit off her words harshly, looking away and pressing her lips together. A long moment passed. When she lifted her joint to her mouth, her hand shook, just a little. 

“Yeah,” said Adore. Her whole chest ached, looking at Katya. “Yeah, man. I heard from her yesterday. She’s taking care of my plants.”

Katya exhaled smoke and something that was almost a laugh. Then she looked down at the red tips of her shoes peeking out from under the black of her dress, scuffing one foot against the dirty pavement. 

“How is she?” she said. 

Adore, watching her, weighed her words. Weighed what she should and shouldn’t say. People thought she did shit without thinking, but that had never been true. It was just that – sometimes there were corners you couldn’t think yourself out of. 

Which was, now she thought of it, probably the crux of a lot of the problems currently laying their guts bare in this dirty alleyway. 

Fuck it, she decided; in thirty seconds she’d have to go back to being careful and circumspect and compromising, and fuck that, and fuck everyone in that sterile boardroom, and fuck biting her tongue when people were hurting for stupid reasons and keeping silent about it. 

“Trixie’s a mess,” she said. “She’s a mess and she misses you and –” Katya looked up – “she’s so fucking  _gone_  on you, man. You have to know.”

Katya’s chest hitched; she looked away again. 

Adore sighed and dropped her joint, stubbing it out under her docs. “I’ve gotta go. Listen…” She waited, but Katya didn’t look back. “I’d say we should get coffee, but all I ever wanna do is go home and sleep when I’m done here. But text me, okay, if you need anything? Anything, Katya. For real.”

Katya’s mouth twitched and she glanced at Adore sideways, her eyes too green under heavy black lids. She lowered her joint and exhaled, then said, “I feel like I should be the one saying that to  _you_.”

“You can owe me one,” said Adore. She checked the time on her phone again, then swore. “Okay, for real,” she said, making her way towards the mouth of the alley; she squeezed Katya’s arm as she passed by. “Don’t forget your wig on your way out,” she called over her shoulder. 

“Give ‘em hell, mama,” Katya replied. 

Adore looked back for just a second at Katya, tucked away in the depths of the alley, joint in hand, watching her go. She looked too small amidst all the grey and grunge. When she noticed Adore’s gaze, she waved a little, just her fingertips, and swayed to make her skirt swish around her ankles, the beads catching the light like fireflies darting through the sky, lost in the black. 

Adore smiled, because she knew Katya wanted her to, and waved back as she left. Her heart hurt. 

Back through the doors, back into the foyer, the elevator, the endless stretch of the halls. Adore lifted her chin and refused to be swallowed up by it, or by the niggling fear at the back of her mind, a waving flag that whispered:  _what if you just made it worse?_

Fuck it. That might not have been the right thing to do, but: fuck it. At least she’d done  _something_. 

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me at @daremebyday on tumblr xo


	7. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more laughs, more sadness! i can’t believe it’s been two months. hopefully yesterday’s interlude served as a bit of a refresher; as usual, i use “she/her” for adore and “he/him” for pretty much everyone else (depending on the context.) no promises on when the next one will be up, but it is currently reading week so i’m gonna try to get as much done as i can. ALSO IVE UPPED THE CHAPTER COUNT. i’m sorry? i don’t know if i should be apologizing. 
> 
> this week on honest werld: bianca tries to cheer a couple of sad sacks up.

 

_TO: KATYA - 7:28 AM - Friday August 29th, 2017_

_check in?_

_FROM: KATYA - 7:28 AM - Friday August 29th, 2017_

_[A single emoji: index finger pinched to thumb, OK, the universal symbol of ‘all-good’.]_

_FROM: KATYA - 7:29 AM - Friday August 29th, 2017_

_you?_

_TO: KATYA - 7:29 AM - Friday August 29th, 2017_

_yeah. that’s about right_

*

“So this is where you’ve been hiding out,” said Bianca, staring inquisitively, like Brian was a specimen under a microscope. “There was a pool on it. I guess we all lost – my money had you under a mattress in a drug den somewhere. You know, a classic.”

“You heard about that, huh,” Brian said, with a smile that landed somewhere between awkward and sheepish. He held Bianca’s gaze steadily as a nervous feeling turned over in his stomach – or maybe that was just the hangover.

He hadn’t seen Bianca in… god, ages. He couldn’t even say when.

“I hear everything,” said Bianca. He looked Brian up and down, brow raised; then his dimples flashed. “It’s just a matter of distinguishing the bullshit from the facts.”

Brian huffed a laugh – flavoured with relief – and stepped back. “Come on in,” he said. “I, uh. I wasn’t expecting to see you. It’s… kind of a mess.”

Bianca grabbed his bag again and followed him in the door, snorting audibly. “If you think I don’t know that…”

“Oh, no, this is fully on me,” Brian said. “Adore’s been away all week.”

“I know,” Bianca said. There was a _thump_ – Brian turned to see that he’d dropped his bag in front of Adore’s room, and was leaning back against the wall beside the door, inspecting him. Bianca continued, “She’s been texting me pictures of the other lawyers’ asses that just say ‘P.E.G. THEM’. The same caption every time. All week. I’m about to call my telephone company and change my damn number.”

“Just buy another prepaid, girl,” said Brian, and grinned when Bianca laughed.

“But yeah,” Bianca said, shrugging. He tucked his hands into his pockets. “I thought I’d come down and, y’know, cheer a bitch up, and then I find you here.”

He gave Brian an expectant look.

Brian cleared his throat. “Yeah,” he said. He rubbed a hand at the corner of his eye, willing away the dry itch of too much liquor and not enough sleep. “I’ve, uh. Had a lot going on, I guess. Uh – I’m in the guest room, actually, sorry. That throws another wrench in your plans. I could take the couch, if you don’t mind my crap being all over the room –”

“Don’t be stupid, no one’s sleeping on the couch,” said Bianca, “except maybe you, right now, if you don’t collapse on the floor instead. You look like you’re about to pass out. Sit down, for Christ’s sake.” He brushed past Brian at what could only be called a _clip_ – fast, determined, and altogether more than Brian’s hungover brain could fully process. Brian chose the path of least resistance and heaved his aching body – he was definitely getting too old to be sleeping without a real pillow, shit – over the arm of the couch, settling down with his cheek leaned against the back cushions as he watched Bianca set about tidying the kitchen. Bianca called over his shoulder, “Should I bother looking in the fridge, or should I spare you the indignity and just go get groceries?”

Brian thought about the wilting lettuce all sad and alone on the second shelf, and closed his eyes. “Uh,” he said. He’d never made that salad. “Might be best not to look.”

Cupboards banged open and shut, keeping time with the pounding in his head. “That’s what your dad told your mom when the nurse put you in her arms, huh,” said Bianca over the racket, who could very well be doing this to punish him.

“You think my dad stuck around that long?” said Brian, suffering quietly in the unmoving dark behind his eyelids. “You think I was born in a _hospital_?”

Bianca cackled. Brian’s head throbbed.

A long moment later, something cool and damp pressed against his temple, and he opened his eyes to see condensation drip down the side of a glass of water from very close-up. He lifted a hand to the glass, fingers brushing against warm skin, then looked up further to meet Bianca’s eyes, which were resting on him with a sober kindness.

“If you’re gonna die, do me the courtesy of moving to the balcony first so you don’t stink up the place,” Bianca said, mouth twitching up.

Brian pressed the glass against his cheek. “Anything to make this easier for _you_ ,” he said.

Bianca – nearly three years later and Brian was still a little too intimidated to even _try_ for ‘Roy’ – huffed a laugh and returned to the kitchen. The cupboards started banging again, but a little quieter this time. Brian sipped his water and watched through half-lidded eyes as Bianca fussed and grumbled. “Always moving things around, I swear to God it’s like she _tries_ to piss me off…”

“If there’s no food, what are you looking for?” Brian said.

“Frying pan. You’re vegetarian, right?”

Brian glanced up, surprised. “Yeah.”

“Get that look off your face. I remember things. I’m not _that_ old.”

Brian smiled, hiding it away behind his cup.

Once Bianca was satisfied with the layout and contents of the kitchen, he leaned back against the counter and started tapping away at his phone rapidly. “Sesame oil, hoisin, star anise,” he muttered, “tofu, rice noodles – if I find anything instant in these cupboards, I swear…”

The sun was splintering through the clouds above the rooftops across the street; Brian shut his eyes and pressed the cup against his cheek, the cool glass soothing the ache behind his eyes. There was a pause in the low flow of words across the room and then Bianca said, “How’re you doing, miss Trixie?”, in the kind of crooning voice you might use on a sick pet.

That was fair, probably.

“Somehow both too close and too far from death at the same time,” Brian mumbled against the glass.

Footsteps sounded across the floor. He opened his eyes again.

“Don’t,” Bianca said, now over by Adore’s room, rustling through his duffel. “I’m just going for groceries. You can catch a few more winks while I’m gone.”

The fog in his head made Brian’s nose itch, his eyelids hang heavy. He nodded distractedly at Bianca as he rubbed at his face with one hand; when the door shut, he slumped against the arm of the couch, knees coming to rest against the back, glass of water cradled in his hands between his ribs and the cushions. Somewhere outside, a wind chime jingled quietly. His eyes drifted shut.

At some point, Bianca came back. Brian twitched into wakefulness at the sound of the door; shoes on hardwood (quickly silenced); the fridge opening and closing and the stove top beeping on. Bianca hummed tunelessly across the room.

Something in Brian twisted, turned in on itself like a dog gnawing at a mat in its stomach fur. Not quite restlessness, not quite nausea. He made a quiet, incoherent noise, then licked his lips and tried again: “Bianca?”

Bianca looked over at him. He saw it through mostly-closed eyes. “Yeah?”

Oil sizzled in the frying pan. The doors to the balcony were still open, and there was a faint smell of ginger beginning to fill the air, chasing away the staleness that clung to the corners of the room. Brian swallowed against the dry feeling in his mouth. “Tell me about your tour?” he said.

Bianca huffed a laugh. “Don’t get me started, girl,” he said, warning, but Brian cocked a sleepy eyebrow and he laughed again, louder. “Alright. The most recent show was in Florida, so, you can imagine, a bunch of swampy assholes – you didn’t need to fuck ‘em to smell ‘em. And the venue’s air conditioning was amazing everywhere _except_ in the dressing room. You wouldn’t believe…”

Bianca rambled on. Brian closed his eyes again and drifted off to it, Bianca’s voice a soothing rhythm in the room, like one of those fountains where the water trickles slowly over tumbled stones. The pounding in his head faded. His eyes shut. He slept.

*

Hours later the door closed again, startling Brian into confused wakefulness and a late afternoon light. The sun had passed beyond the scope of the glass doors, casting the living room into shadow. Brian blinked hazily against the indistinct dark of the entryway, unable to make sense out of the lines and shapes that blurred before his eyes.

There was the thump of a bag being dropped. His gaze focused in on the sound – and up, to its source, where Adore stood listless, pale and brittle in the shadows. Her eyes slipped shut while he watched, and her lips thinned, pursed.

He opened his mouth.

“Adore.”

Adore’s eyes flew open to meet Brian’s gaze, but it wasn’t him who’d spoken. She looked to his right.

“B!”

In a flash, Adore’s face went from spent exhaustion to an almost hungry joy – not hungry, exactly. Sharp at the edges and a little too bright in the eyes. Brian didn’t know how to explain it, but it hit him like a punch all the same, familiar and close. Adore flung herself at Bianca, who caught her easily.

“Hey, baby,” Bianca said, knuckles going white at her spine.

“What the fuck, Yanx, what the fuck,” Adore kept repeating. Her elbows poked out like a spiny guard where her arms were wrapped around Bianca’s neck – like, god fucking help you if you try to get between this shit. She’ll fuck you up.

“What? I can’t take my weekend off to come visit my best girl?”

“You fucker,” Adore crowed, drawing back with a face-splitting smile. Bianca grinned back, crooked, and tucked a little of her bangs behind her ear.

“Only one of us gets to affect a tone of outrage here, bitch,” Bianca said. “You’ve been keeping Trixie Mattel stashed away in your little grow-op for _how_ long, exactly?”

Adore paused, and looked back at Brian.

Brian dragged himself upright – well, more or less. Bianca had drawn a step back, watching him with an eyebrow cocked. Adore, holding one of Bianca’s hands in both of hers, was watching too, mouth set with trepidation, waiting for Brian’s move.

“About a month,” Brian said. “It’s, uh. It’s a long story.”

Bianca’s brow twitched higher. “I cleaned your puke out of the bath mat while you were passed out just now. I think you can fuckin’ humour me.”

Adore’s eyes widened.

“Oh my god,” she said, “oh my god, dude, the _thing_ –” she glanced quickly at Bianca and then back, “when I was in L.A. I saw – but the _thing_ , last night, dude, how fucked were you?”

“Ask your bath mat,” Bianca said. “And what _thing_ is it we’re referring to? I’m not a fucking codetalker – no offence to your people, Trixie.”

Brian laughed, hoarse but real. “That was the Navajo, you _dumb bitch._ ” He sipped his water – which miraculously hadn’t spilled all over him during his nap – and aimed for a smirk. “Sorry that the only code you understand is _hanky_ because you’re a fucking dinosaur.”

Bianca cackled, and the sound – bright and younger than such an old bitch deserved – bounced off the walls, pushing back the pall of the encroaching evening and the stale air in the corners left over from Brian’s week alone.

“Watch it, girl,” Bianca shot back. “I brought your dinner into this world and I can take it out just as easy.”

“ _Food_ ,” Adore blurted, turning suddenly and shaking Bianca’s arm.

Bianca rolled his eyes. “Did your lawyers not feed you in L.A.? It’s on the stove. I’d say you know where your own plates are, but in this kitchen, I can’t be sure.”

Adore smacked a kiss on his cheek. “Thanks, B,” she said, then spun past him into the kitchen.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bianca said. He eyed Brian critically. “I’d ask what you’ve been eating but I’ve already met it. You look thin.”

“Who knew depression had such perks?” Brian said, but judging by the way Bianca’s lips thinned, it fell flat.

“Come on,” Bianca said, decisive. “You’re having seconds tonight, and if I have to clean them out of more of Adore’s furniture later, I’ll do it. Because I care, Trixie Mattel.” He came over to the couch and offered Brian a hand up; once Brian was standing, he took him by the elbow and lead him towards the kitchen. “But expect my invoice by Monday. My mother taught me two things: how to clean and how to bill for it. So don’t you take me for a fool.”

“Oh, I’d never,” Brian laughed. “Lot of drunk white women stay at the hotel she worked at, huh?”

“Don’t compare yourself to them, now. You couldn’t _afford_ to stay there.”

Adore flitted around once they were sitting like she had springs instead of feet, spreading candles throughout the room so everything was glowing and soft at the edges. And Bianca could _cook_ , apparently, because it wasn’t enough that the bitch was talented and funny and well-read and handsome. Brian scraped his plate clean and – at Bianca’s glare – got seconds.

At one point, Bianca stepped outside to make a call. Adore leaned over and said, “Trixie, when I was in L.A.,” and then paused, one hand curled around Brian’s wrist. “Yeah?” he said, prompting, grinning easily with the food and the hour and the company. Her gaze flicked across his face – then she smiled and said, “I was really fuckin’ worried about my plants, dude.”

“Wow,” he said. “They’re _fine_. Where is the faith? I thought we were friends.”

“You’ve said that to a lot of people in your life, haven’t you,” Bianca yelled from outside the doors.

It was good. Everything else might be fucked beyond belief, but this – it was good, and something in Brian’s chest felt like it had been opened, like the first sweet breeze breaking through a summer heat wave, fluttering the curtains and knocking screens against their frames.

*

Brian woke just after midnight to a dry mouth – this hangover was going on twenty-four hours now, which was some _bull_ shit – and the quiet sound of rain and distant voices. The glass by his bed was empty so he pulled on a shirt and slipped out the door, only to stop, drawn up short at the sight before him.

Adore and Bianca were on the balcony. They were turned in towards each other, talking quietly; Adore had one arm braced up on the railing, and Bianca was holding her hand. The city beyond them hid behind a grey curtain of late August rain. The night haze closed them in together, away from the rest of the world – and Brian, standing at his door, holding his empty glass against his chest, was just as far away.

Bianca said something he couldn’t catch, a serious expression straining the corners of his eyes as he searched Adore’s face for… Brian didn’t know. Adore replied, then ducked her head, shoulders hunching up. She freed her hand to fumble at her pocket, coming up with a carton of cigarettes. She lit one in the candle on her right – and missed the look that crossed Bianca’s face, aching and tired.

As Brian watched, Adore aimed a crooked smile out from under shaggy bangs – saying something, cracking some joke – only for it to break at the edges, ragged and thin in the orange glow of her cigarette. She turned away, out into the rain. Her shoulders, square and black against the grey night, cut a lonely figure, like some doomed ingenue from an old hollywood movie.

Bianca stepped closer and wrapped an arm around her waist. Her shoulders shook.

Brian couldn’t watch anymore – shouldn’t have seen any of it. He slipped away into the bathroom to fill his glass, then back into his room, deliberately not looking out onto the balcony again – and it hurt not to, in some fucked up way, hurt worse _not_ looking than looking had. Because seeing Bianca hold Adore’s hand, and seeing Adore lean into the warmth of Bianca’s body – that had fucking hurt, like a blunt force straight to the chest.

He went back to bed. Cheek pressed into his pillow, he looked again – for the fifth or sixth time that day – at the texts from that morning between him and Katya. Not even ten words and they were all he could think about.

He fell asleep and dreamed of seagulls in flight; white sheets rumpled like seafoam; warm skin and a warmer smile.

*

_bianca is here and she thinks she’s my mom,_ he texted Katya the next morning, each word coming too slow and careful. Stupid. He was so stupid. _how do i tell her it’s a new dad i need instead?_

He considered the text for a solid minute before pressing send.

There was no reply, but no read receipt either. He stared at the phone for another minute or two, lost in thought, until a knock came at the door.

“Hey,” Adore called, “hey, get your guitar, I want to show Bianx what you’ve been teaching me.”

“Sure, just a minute,” he called back. He woke his phone up to check it one more time, then got up to grab his guitar from the corner, flipping his notebook shut where it lay on the bed along the way.

He’d gotten a little work done this morning. It still made his palms sweat to see it all laid out like that, all the little fears and hopes he tried not to look at from day to day, and to remember that video on his instagram. But there were too _many_ words set down to let them all go to waste. And anyway, he didn’t have to share the finished product with anyone. Just Katya.

He owed Katya that much.

Out in the living room, Bianca was curled on the couch barefoot, like a large and particularly self-satisfied house cat, smiling over a mug of coffee at Adore on the other end, her guitar balanced precariously in her lap.

“Oh, cool,” Brian said, affecting as much irritation as possible when they looked up at him. “Everyone gets to sit except me. Very cool.”

“Someone called me a dinosaur last night and someone didn’t,” Bianca said. “Figure the rest out for yourself.”

“Oh,” Brian said, and discreetly shot Adore the finger around the body of his guitar. Adore raised a lazy peace sign in return. “I’ll take that, I guess,” he continued, contemplative, “I probably deserve it.”

“Grace in defeat,” Bianca said. “I like that about you, Trixie.”

Brian hummed, dumping his phone on the coffee table and then straightening to sling his strap over his shoulders. He tapped his foot on the floor idly. “What did you want to play?” he asked Adore, then, not looking down, plucked out the notes to the theme of _Jurassic Park_.

Adore fell back into the arm of the couch, laughing, and Bianca pointed a finger at Brian and said, “You’d better lock your door tonight, bitch.”

“Please,” said Brian. “I welcome death.”

“Could we maybe, like, play my fuckin’ songs? Before I pussy out over here?” said Adore.

Bianca made a skeptical face at her. She made a much worse face back.

“Alright, alright,” said Brian, adjusting his strap. “ _27 Club?_ ”

Adore’s new material was all angry and loud, but she kept returning to these softer, acoustic versions, like there was something in there between the notes that she was trying to find, something that got lost when it was all grinding electric rhythms. Brian followed her on the melody, rounding the sound out with three notes for her every one. Her music didn’t sound angry to him. It just sounded honest.

That had always been Adore’s greatest strength, though – that revelatory honesty, that unquestionable _realness_. Even when she was plastering on a smile, it was there underneath, palpable. Brian didn’t know how she did it.

( _Nothing is real, mama,_ Katya would say, but that was also just her way of saying that _everything_ was.)

(Brian didn’t know about all that. Some stuff was realer than other stuff – it was just a question of whether that _mattered_.)

The last chorus faded into a settled quiet. Adore tapped her pic against the body of her guitar rapidly, like a wood-pecker, then looked up at Bianca through her lashes and said, “What do you think?”

Bianca opened his mouth, paused, and then huffed a quiet laugh. “I think you put the rest of us to shame,” he said, and Adore ducked her head over her guitar.

Brian looked at them a moment, then swallowed and said, “I just want to remind everyone in the room that _I_ did the heartfelt acoustic thing first. Just. You know. In case anyone had forgotten.”

Adore laughed and kicked out at him, missing his knee with her turtle-print-socked foot by a mile.

“I hate you,” she said, beaming. “ _9 Yards?_ ”

“It’s your gig, girl,” he said, clinching the capo into place.

Adore nodded. She tapped them into the intro, grinning up at Brian like they were a team, and they fell into the melody together, just like they’d been practicing all month.

Three songs later they took a break, while Adore stretched her fingers out and Bianca got them all drinks. The two of them traded jabs across the room, and Brian, cross-legged on the floor, tucked a smile into the body of his guitar as he listened to their banter. He fiddled away at the notes aimlessly. The words he’d been penning late at night ran through his mind, the internal rhyme, the dips and pauses.

“I have it on good authority you never reorganized a damn thing when you were living with your mother,” Bianca was saying, “so I can only assume you’ve picked it up now to spite me –”

“I reorganized plenty!” Adore protested. “Moving shit around is reorganizing, it just isn’t _tidying_.”

“Oh, and you think you can have one without the other? Like, oh, well, I put this condom on, guess you can fuck me in the ass now! That ain’t how it works!”

Adore dissolved into laughter.

“Wow, I’ve been doing sex wrong this _whole time,_ ” Brian said, then almost dumped his guitar out of his lap as his phone buzzed on the table. The screen flashed with a new text: _FROM: KATYA._

The guitar went on the floor; the drink Bianca tried to offer him went unnoticed.

“It’s from Katya,” he heard Adore stage-whisper as he snatched his phone up and unlocked it. “You can tell ‘cause she looks like she’s about to throw up her heart out of her mouth.”

“That’s visual,” said Bianca, and “Fuck the both of you,” said Brian, exiting the room, gaze glued to his phone.

Safely tucked away with a door between him and his hecklers, he read the text a second time, a third, and his own before it:

_TO: KATYA - 12:07 PM - Saturday August 30th, 2017_

_bianca is here and she thinks she’s my mom_

_how do i tell her it’s a new dad i need instead?_

_FROM: KATYA - 1:34 PM - Saturday August 30th, 2017_

_what’s a step up from a check-in_

He sank down onto his bed – and then a new text appeared, and another, and another.

_if bianca’s ur dad and my uncle what does that make us? because i’m into it_

_i should have opened with that_

_I just. can’t tell when it’s a joke and when it’s a call for help with you right now_

Brian swallowed.

_me either_ , he typed.

Moving between the living room and the guest room was like moving into another house – another life entirely. The air prickled at his skin, slightly too cool with the encroaching fall. He’d left his window open the night before; gone back to his room, the image of Adore’s shoulders and Bianca’s hand at the turn of her hip burned into his mind. He’d cracked the window and lain on the sheets, thinking, thinking, completely un-fucking-able to stop thinking, staring out the window at the shadows cast by Seattle’s spindly bulk.

Katya’s texts from before had lit the dark of the room with an unfamiliar blue as Brian read them over a third time, a fourth. As his eyes had slipped shut, he’d heard it again, the way Katya’s voice had cracked: i _t’s not – you don’t just get to_ have _things._

In the late afternoon, now, he hunched over his phone, shoulders up against the silence of the walls. He typed, _i’m okay._ And then, _I don’t know what else to say._

There was a pause. Three inscrutable dots.

_i don’t know how you did it, back then,_ Katya sent. _trusted i’d make it through off one emoji and some incredibly unwarranted faith in – idk, fate? god?_

_You,_ sent Brian without pause.

He hurt. It was a physical thing, like all the ache inside of him had clawed its way out of the lock-safe of his chest and sunk long nails into his bones, his joints, all the spongy marrow, the nooks and crannies of his body. The way he missed Katya – it was a physical thing.

_Dumb,_ sent Katya.

And, yeah.

_i’m tired,_ he typed. The words came slow, because every letter felt like it cost him something. _i feel sick all the time, more than i can blame on a day-old hangover. i miss you. I don’t know what to do._

He stared down at the words in the little text box, sitting idle, deceptively tranquil. His thumb hovered for a beat over the [x] to delete – then he shook his head and sent it off.

Delivered and then Read flickered instantly, followed by the ellipsis of Katya’s typing.

_okay,_ came the answer. _okay. thank you for telling me, tracy._

For some reason, the simple, sober seriousness of it made his eyes prickle. He huffed a laugh and rubbed at his nose.

_we’re gonna work this out,_ was the next message, and then he really was tearing up, lashes sticking damply together as he blinked down at his phone.

_we’re gonna work this out and it’s all gonna be okay,_ Katya sent.

_thats a lot of optimism from a selfprofessed fatalist,_ he replied one-handed, wiping at his eyes with the other.

_satanist,_ Katya answered quickly. _theyre different things. sometimes._

Brian huffed a laugh, and then, mouth twitching despite himself, typed and sent: _oh, you mean some people try to be bipartisatan?_

There was a pause.

_I,_ Katya sent.

_I can’t even be mad_

_Im actually relieved_

Brian really did laugh then, a sharp bark, and grinned down at his phone, like he could see Katya grinning back from the other side of the words.

The dots returned.

_FROM: KATYA - 1:43 PM - Saturday August 30th, 2017_

_so bianca’s there now? how’s hell’s favourite senior citizen doing_

That one Brian screencapped to show to Bianca post-haste.

_good,_ he replied. _sounds like she’s taken up throat-singing. seems to be sleeping in adore’s room._

Katya sent back a line of eyes-emojis.

_mhm. it’s good though,_ Brian continued. _like a continuous wave of benevolent judgement radiating directly at me. i think that’s healthy. Needed, even._

There was no reply for a minute; Brian kicked his heel gently against the back leg of the bed frame, waiting it out. His gaze drifted to his notebook, open at his side, and the corrections he’d scrawled out that morning. Assonance, meter, rhythm – just because it was honest didn’t mean it could be sloppy. He had his pride, here.

His phone buzzed again. Katya, forever on his wavelength, had sent: _i liked your song_

And then:

_well, for values of liked. I mean – you know._

_but it was good. is there more of it?_

Lots more – black ink bleeding across faint blue lines, all the shit he’d been not-saying for a year or more condensed into four-four time. A whole fucking mess of a song more.

_Yeah,_ he sent. And then, biting his lip: _i’ll have to play it for you sometime._

He looked down at those words on his screen and the flicker of the Read notification, then amended - _\- i mean. i want to._

_i’d like that,_ Katya replied, followed by a single heart.

Outside the guest room, a guitar picked up again, hesitant at first and then with more confidence. Brian glanced at the door, then out the window at the stretch of grey clouds hanging over the city. He turned and lay down on his side, phone in hand, and scrolled up to the top of the conversation – 1:34 PM, Saturday August 30th – to re-read it from the start.

*

Too late that night, tired but restless, Brian stepped out of the guest room to see faint light on the balcony and a thin haze of smoke. The apartment smelled vaguely sweet; mug in hand, he followed the scent out through the open glass doors, where Bianca was sitting alone, watching a small stick of incense burn. The orange glow at the tip simmered steadily, like a car light on a highway at midnight.

Bianca turned at Brian’s approach. “You’re up late,” he said, tipping his head back to observe Brian as he hovered in the doorway awkwardly.

“Yeah.” Brian jiggled the mug. “Getting some writing done.”

“Yeah? How’s that going?”

“Oh, you know. Slightly less painful than a country doctor pulling teeth. The usual.”

Bianca laughed softly. “C’mere,” he said. “Come sit. Enjoy the night. And this, uh, smelly shit Adore chose to inflict on us.”

“Really? I don’t see her out here,” Brian pointed out. “She bought it, but you lit it, girl.”

Bianca harrumphed, sinking deeper into his nest of blankets. “Well, she’s actually sleeping for once. _Someone’s_ gotta keep the neighbours awake on her behalf.”

(When they’d walked into the magic shop that evening, Bianca’s first words were, “This feels like some white people bullshit.” He’d scanned the place, scowling, while Adore held her hands up to her face and snickered behind them. “No sense of self-preservation, messing with forces they don’t understand. It’s a miracle there’s enough of ‘em still around to plague the rest of us.”

Steph’s first words upon meeting Bianca were, “You look like you need more chamomile in your life.”

“I have some we can share,” Adore had offered; “if you can fuckin’ find it,” Bianca had interjected under his breath.

Adore had dug her elbow into his side. “Don’t be a grump,” she’d said. “I like these white people, man. They sell me crystals.”

Brian, behind them, waved at Steph with weary commiseration.)

Bianca tugged one blanket free from his pile as Brian settled down and passed it over; Brian took it with a nod, hunching his spine against the chill. Fall came faster in Seattle than L.A., like an impatient host ushering a guest out the door. Brian tried hard not to think of the implications of that particular metaphor.

“Let me,” Bianca said, nodding at Brian’s mug, then, when he passed it over, poured half of his own into it. A faint haze of steam rose out of the mug as Brian took it back.

“Thanks,” he said, then choked on his first sip – not because it was hot, but because it was _beyond_ alcoholic. “The fuck is this?” he managed.

“The only cure for the common cold,” said Bianca. “I don’t know. Whatever was in the cupboards. Lemon, chamomile, and a shitload of gin, can you taste it?”

Brian stared at him. “No,” he said. “It’s just a delicate _bouquet_.”

“Ooh, someone thinks she’s fancy,” said Bianca reproachfully. “You don’t want it, give it back.”

“No, no.” Brian huddled the mug closer to his chest. Bianca’s mouth twitched crookedly.

They drank in silence for a minute. The skies lay heavy and low, weighted with rain; the street was quiet. On the coffee table, the incense was burning down to its stick, the sweet unfamiliar smell drifting on the breeze. Sips two, three, and four of Bianca’s hell brew went better, and a slow warmth began to fill Brian from the inside out. He slumped back into the chair, twisting his feet in the ends of the blanket as he stared out onto the street. The buildings were so obscured by the dark that he could only pick them out in edges and lines, like some monochromatic cubist painting.

“How long do you think you have left here?” said Bianca.

When Brian turned to look, Bianca was watching him – might have been watching him the whole time.

“I’m not asking ‘cause of Adore. Short of insulting her mother or voting for Trump, Adore would let you stay until the oceans rise to swallow this godforsaken hipster port-in-the-storm whole. I’m asking for _you_ – ‘cause I don’t know how much longer you have it in you. Staying. And you’d better have a plan for when you can’t anymore, because otherwise this whole bullshit tangle will just get worse.”

Brian lifted his mug, rested it against his bottom lip. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah, I know.”

Bianca let him sit a moment longer, then said, “So?”

“Yeah,” Brian said again. He took another sip to steady himself. “I don’t know. Everytime I think I have a handle on what I’m feeling, something else comes up, or something happens, and it’s like I’m back in that moment again – standing in my bedroom in L.A. and realizing I couldn’t do it for another second more.”

Bianca hummed, low and almost soundless in the dark. “And what’s _it_?”

“The whole – thing. All of it.”

“Narrow that down for me.”

Brian turned and scowled at him. “You know, Adore never gives me this kind of shit.”

“Adore has her own shit. That’s why you never asked her to actually help – you just asked her for a place to stay. You wouldn’t have sat in that chair, and you wouldn’t have said as much as you have, if you didn’t want me to give you shit.”

He held Brian’s gaze steadily until Brian looked away, back down into his mug.

“Yeah,” Brian said.

“Hey,” Bianca said. “You know I wouldn’t push if I didn’t care.” He nudged Brian’s knee with his own. “Don’t repeat that or I’ll deny it.”

Brian laughed, just quietly.

“So,” Bianca said again. “What’s _it_?”

A siren rang out, somewhere in the distance. Brian took another drink. The clouds overhead cast everything in deep blue shadows; his hands had gone ghostly white and veinless. He wrapped them tighter around the warmth of his mug.

“Everyone wanting something from me,” he said finally, then corrected, “ _expecting_ something from me, and feeling like I have to answer to it. All of it, because no two people expect the same thing. That’s not what I fucking signed up for,” he said, volume climbing, then he cut himself off, looking away.

“Isn’t it?” said Bianca impassively.

Brian – snapped.

“I signed up to compete on a dumb-ass game show. I signed up to show my art to the world – I signed up to share what I could do, not _who I am_. That’s mine. That’s mine and not any other fucking person’s in the world. I didn’t sign up to be grabbed at, told what to do, or told when and where to spill my guts for some strangers’ emotional boners. They can go jerk off to season seven if that’s what they really need. I owe them my work – my best work. I don’t owe them _me_.”

The mug was shaking in his hands. He breathed, then breathed again, fighting against the band around his chest.

“No,” Bianca said gently. “You don’t.”

Brian opened his mouth, then closed it. It felt like something had dislodged inside of him, something that had been stuck in crooked where it didn’t belong; he couldn’t meet Bianca’s eyes. He looked out at the skyline until his mouth felt less dry and he could speak evenly. “But that’s not how it works.”

Bianca made a questioning noise. “Isn’t it?”

And – for fuck’s sake. “I don’t know. Why don’t you go ask Adore.”

Silence. Brian pressed his lips together, then took another sip of his drink. That was a low blow and he knew it. When he looked back, it was Bianca staring out at the skyline, face unreadable.

“Sorry,” Brian said quietly. And then: “I don’t know how to go back. But this isn’t… this isn’t who I want to be. I didn’t know I could get to this point, not anymore.” He hunched his shoulders. “I’m such a fucking mess.”

“Well,” said Bianca. “Yeah.”

Brian’s mouth twitched. “Thanks, girl.”

They sat in silence for a moment – a new, companionable silence that Brian had never felt with Bianca before, always a little too impressed and in awe to actually relax. He drained the last of his mug and pulled his blanket further up around his shoulders and neck. Sitting with Bianca like this felt like sitting with Adore did, like – like sitting with Shea, or Kim, or Katya, and that made him feel both warm and lonely at the same time.

“You know,” he said abruptly, “Adore has to be one of the – the best fucking people I’ve ever met.”

“That’s not exactly breaking news to me,” said Bianca.

“I’m serious. I show up out of nowhere and she just… lets me stay in her house, tells me it can be for as long as I need – seriously, who does that? For some bitch off the street? Come on. _I_ wouldn’t.”

Bianca rolled his eyes. “Don’t be melodramatic. You’re not some bitch off the street. She liked you before all this, she told me so.”

“But you know what I mean,” Brian insisted. He watched Bianca from heavy, half-lidded eyes – he was either tipsy or half-asleep, and for the fucking life of him he could not have said which.

“I do,” said Bianca. “But – you realize she got something out of it too. Having you here. It’s been good for her.”

“Well,” said Brian, “well, yeah.” He tipped his face over to look at Bianca fully, the lines at the corners of his eyes and mouth and the way he held the edges of the blankets bundled in his lap, arms crossed to keep them place and hands tucked into his sides for warmth. “She’s lucky to have you. You balance her out – you’re like a rock. Or, I don’t know, some other, less-cliché shit.”

“I can see why you’re such a successful songwriter,” said Bianca.

“Fuck you, you’re the wind beneath her fucking wings.” Bianca laughed, and Brian grinned sleepily. “I mean it. You’re like – you’re so steady. Nothing touches you. That’s what she needs right now.”

(Earlier, he remembered, in the magic shop: the moment where Adore had retreated from the conversation, so smoothly Brian almost hadn’t noticed – eyes going distant and distracted, body closing in on itself. One moment she was there and the next she wasn’t.

And then: the way Bianca had stepped forward, touching a hand to the small of her back. The way Adore had leaned into it. The way Steph hadn’t noticed at all, because Bianca had taken over the conversation completely, buying Adore the moment she needed to get herself together.)

Bianca’s mouth pursed and he looked away.

“Who’s older, you or her?”

“I –” Brian paused. “I don’t know, actually.”

“She makes it easy to forget. And then sometimes I look at her and I feel like she has to be my age. No one that young should look so tired.”

Brian shifted in his seat, unsure of how to respond to the strange tone in Bianca’s voice. “Bitch has good skin.”

Bianca hummed quietly.

“You know,” he said, “you go through things in life and you think, this isn’t so bad. There’s no point in lingering on it because the more time you spend in place, the less time you spend getting yourself out of there. You know? You think, I can handle anything. And then you see someone else go through their own things – someone you care about, someone you love… “ Bianca trailed off. “ _That’s_ the real hardship. That’s the shit you can’t push away or push through. Where you learn you aren’t so tough after all.”

Brian swallowed, and thought about Katya.

“It’s not –” Bianca frowned and looked away. “It’s not her fault. But it’s hard.”

“She’s lucky to have you,” Brian said again, more forcefully. Bianca looked back,

surprised – then smiled all lopsided, and reached over and squeezed Brian’s forearm.

“Anyone ever told you you’re a sap when you drink, Miss Mattel?”

“Yeah.” Brian looked down at Bianca’s hand, then at his own around his mug. A dozen nights from the past month filled his head, the warm cocoon of a tipsy haze, Katya’s voice in his ear. He had developed this bad habit of repeating _hey, I like you,_ like it was some big secret he was revealing every time. And then Katya would say, smile evident in the timbre of his voice: _you’re a sap, Tracy._ How many nights?

God, Brian _missed_ him.

He swallowed against the tangle of feelings lodged tightly at the base of his throat. “Is it worth it?”

“Mm?”

“You’re the biggest name there is in our world. You know what I mean. Is it worth it?”

Bianca looked at him, equal parts thoughtful and watchful. Words clustered on Brian’s tongue but he couldn’t get them out: _the stress, the loneliness, the bullshit, the distance –_

“It can be,” said Bianca after a long moment. “You have to _make_ it worth it, though. Make it yours. Do what you want to do, no more and no less, and make sure that at the end of the day, you have something to come back to.”

*

Brian dreamed of the pier; he woke too early, with gritty eyes and a tightness in his throat, and lay on his side looking out at the heavy grey skies which had persisted through the night. He remembered Steph, the day before:

“You look weathered,” she’d said, while Adore showed Bianca around the store.

“Yeah,” he’d said. “My pores are all oc-cloud-ed.”

She exhaled half a laugh, but looked at him with serious eyes. “So,” she’d said, “how’s that end of the world treating you?”

Seattle outside his window grew lighter but not brighter, the grey pall lying melancholy along its lines. All the colour leached out; that last pretense of summer giving up the fight. Brian shut his eyes against it and fell back asleep.

*

“My uber is downstairs,” Bianca said, chiding, as Adore refused to let go. “Dan.”

Adore sniffled. “Shut your face and let me hug you.”

“My wrinkles are getting deeper by the second, Delano.”

“‘Cause you can’t afford to get a lift done. Shut your _face_.”

Brian, leaning back against the island that separated the kitchen from the rest of the room, looked down at his hands so he wouldn’t have to see the way Bianca’s mouth twisted, abruptly less than firm.

“Now don’t you two do anything stupid once I’m not around to keep an eye out,” Bianca said a moment later, “and you, don’t you let that one forget to eat, okay?”

Brian glanced up again to find both of them looking at him, Adore with a fond smile halfway there and Bianca with a scowl.

“I eat!” he protested.

“Hmph,” said Bianca.

“Okay, exactly _one_ of us looks like a short brown stick insect, so…”

“Shut up and c’mere,” Bianca said, finally loosening himself from Adore’s clutches, and when Brian hesitated, he came over himself, grasping Brian’s elbows, one then the other, and tugging gently until he folded forward into the waiting hug.

Bianca was warm and steady, and Brian shuddered, just a little. He didn’t know how Adore could let go.

When Bianca was at the door, bags in hand, he paused and looked back at both of them, even though his Uber was waiting (and beginning to honk intermittently.) His gaze flicked from Adore, to Brian, and then back to Adore. 

Adore made a rough noise. “Text me, dumbass,” she said. “I’ll miss you. Fuck. Get out of my house.”

Bianca laughed, eyes crinkling up at the corners, then waved a little at both of them – like a fucking _dork_ – and disappeared out the door.

Adore slumped back against the couch. She looked both tired and older; but there was something more quiet about her energy than Brian had seen in the past month. He went over to settle beside her, and wrapped an arm around her shoulders gingerly.

She rested her head against his shoulder. He rubbed his thumb against the slope of her arm, absent, then said, “Want to get plastered?”

It was barely noon.

“Yeah,” said Adore. “Fuckin’ slaughtered.”

The rest of the day was… a bit of a blur.

*

Brian woke to a new day, sunlight, a pounding head, and a text from Katya.

_LA is more of a sinkhole than i remember,_ it read. _Anxious about fault lines & wishing u were here._

He pressed his face into his pillow and read it again, then again, half a smile creeping onto his face.

The night before was pretty much a shitshow, but he remembered parts here and there; vaguely, he could recall Adore digging her toes into his thigh – she’d been stretched out along the couch, while he’d been tucked into one end, mug of something ungodly held between his hands – and telling him, voice quieter than the night outside, that she’d watched the video. His video, the one he’d deleted from Instagram.

“That’s,” she’d said, slurring a little, “that’s some real shit, dude. Like some real ass shit. That’s not the shit you walk away from.”

_But I have,_ he’d replied, barely even conscious of what he was saying. _Lots of times. Katya and me… it’s always been ‘almost’ with us. Almost after almost after almost._

And almosts only count –

“But you want it,” she’d said. “And I know – I _know_ she does too. Dude. I know.”

And what was he supposed to do with that? Did Adore think he hadn’t figured that much out for himself?

Fuck.

He turned over in bed, away from the sunlight, and groaned quietly. It felt like a small animal had fucking _died_ in his mouth. He dragged himself upright on unsteady feet. There was a slight possibility he was still drunk.

Phone in hand, he stumbled out of bed, hitching his boxers up with one hand. The stretch to the door felt like an interminable distance. _Water,_ he thought, _get some water, and then back to bed for more sleep, and when I wake up I’ll feel like a person again –_

He opened the door.

For one golden moment, everything was still. Then somewhere across the room, something jerked, and Adore gasped, “ _wait_ –”

Brian blinked.

Another jerk of movement; a _thud_ ; and then his vision cleared, the noonday sun slanting through the apartment easing in his eyes, and he saw Adore staring back at him from the couch, mouth slack, one hand pressing her phone face-down into the coffee table.

“I was –” she stuttered, “– fuck, I was –”

In his hand, Brian’s phone began to vibrate insistently.

“Fuck, Trixie,” Adore said weakly. “I was _live_.”

Brian stared at her.

People talk about the bottom falling out of your stomach. This wasn’t that. This was walls tumbling outwards, like a card structure when the table under it’s been knocked, the hollow inside of a house revealed to the open air in the shock of a second. This was the walls of his chest split open; fault lines doing what fault lines do.

He pressed a hand behind him at the door, like maybe he could step back into his room and all this would go away.

His phone was still buzzing, continuously now, the noise like a power drill. His mouth was dry as sawdust.

He wasn’t ready. The walls were coming down and he wasn’t fucking ready.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> come find me in the wine aisle @daremebyday on tumblr


	8. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's go into 2018 sadder, gayer, and more determined than ever before. happy new year, fuckers.

_FROM: SHEA -_

_Girl. the fuck._

_*_

_FROM: KIM -_

_it’s gonna be okay_

_bri?_

_text me back dumbass_

_*_

_FROM: BOB -_

_trixie, seattle is for white people_

_call me when you can, okay?_

_*_

_FROM: TRANNIKA -_

_I feel like i’m somehow responsible for this. Where did i go wrong? Not to philosophize over your crisis. Crises. I can’t believe i’m yet another in a long line of bad fathers ruining your life_

_anyway lmk if u want me to knife someone_

_I’m serious. I’ve got ur back, babe_

_*_

_FROM: VIOLET -_

_If you banged adore delano before i did bitch i will be so, so mad._

*

For a searing moment, Brian considered throwing his phone against the wall.

Something in the way his fingers clenched around its hard, vibrating shell must have alerted Adore, because she dove over the back of the couch, yelping " _No!_ " She grabbed for his phone -- caught her fingers around his knuckles, the hard ridge of his thumb, and held on tightly.

"Give it to me, okay," she said, staring him dead in the face. "You'll regret that."

"Fuck you," he said automatically.

"Fuck you too," she said, just as automatic, and squeezed his hand tighter -- not struggling for the phone anymore, just clinging on. Her gaze flickered, searching his face. "Don't do that, man."

All at once Brian sagged. Her grip was the only thing that saved his phone as it dropped from suddenly-nerveless fingers. He pressed his back against the door and his hands against his face.

"Fuck," he said. "Oh, fuck. Fucking god."

Adore grabbed his shoulder, but didn't look up from his phone as she turned it off decisively.

"That was so fucking stupid," Brian said, a strange sense of wonder ballooning inside of him. "I'm -- holy shit, I am so fucking stupid."

"You're not," said Adore, but Brian just laughed, more air than noise, like the crunch of frosted leaves under foot.

Over on the coffee table, Adore's phone started to buzz too. The laughter cut off with a strangled noise.

"That's -- that'll be Bianca," Adore said, squeezing Brian's shoulder tighter. "I keep my notifications off."

Brian nodded. Adore made no move to get her phone; she just  _stood_ there, looking at him, waiting, brows drawn together. Brian felt himself open his mouth, then close it. He wasn't sure he was breathing.

And then it hit, and everything inside of him deflated with a hiss of breath: " _Katya._ Oh, fuck. Katya.  _"_

“And that’s why we don’t throw phones at things.  _That_ would have been stupid.” Adore sounded matter-of-fact, but she swayed in closer to him, the squareness of her shoulders blocking out the room, her hands coming to circle his biceps, bracing. The image swallowed Brian up: a cell clutched to Katya’s ear, and  _I’m sorry, but the number you have dialed is no longer in service_ , and his  _face_ \--

“Fuckin’  _breathe_ , dude,” said Adore, squeezing so hard it hurt.

It was like coming back into his own body, the way everything around him went from vague sketches to full colour. The world filled back in. The punk posters on the walls; a car honking outside somewhere; Adore’s greasy bangs falling into her eyes.

 _Katya_.

“I need to call her,” he said.

Adore sighed with relief. “Yeah, you do,” she said, and let him go. He teetered back against the door and watched her make her way into the kitchen. “Our phones are out of commission, officially, but you’re in luck, ‘cause my mama always taught us to keep a burner around the house.”

Brian stared. “You’re -- you must be kidding.”

Adore stretched for the top shelf of a cupboard, then returned to flat feet, jiggling her fist. “We’re from Azusa, bitch. If a gang doesn’t get you, an earthquake might. Bonnie doesn’t take chances on that shit.”

“But -- but  _why_ \-- oh, my god, whatever, rain check on this conversation. Give it to me,” Brian said, because his head was already spinning and he didn’t have time to fucking _process_ over here.

Adore stared at him for a moment, then crossed the room and pressed it into his hands. The feel of skin on skin was somehow reassuring.

“Mind your minutes,” she said.

Brian laughed hoarsely, and slipped back into his room.

*

The time it took to dial and ring through felt interminable. Brian stared out the window long enough to realize that his free hand was vibrating at his side -- not shaking,  _vibrating_ , frantic, like a tuning rod that had been struck. Seattle outside was too still. He turned away as the call rang mechanically, paced to the nearest wall, slid down it until he’d dropped to the floor.

He had a funny moment of deja-vu and realized -- he was right back where he’d started. That very first day, at Adore’s. He’d sat right here, and texted Katya, and wondered what the fuck he was doing.

The answer, apparently, was fucking his whole entire life up.

“Fffuck,” he breathed, his pulse picking up again -- and then the call clicked through.

“I don’t recognize this number so you have five seconds and  _only_ because I’m feeling generous and by generous I mean panicked --”

“Katya! Katya,” he interrupted, and there was a rough noise on the other side of the line, so he said it again, like he couldn’t help it. “ _Katya_.”

“Trixie,” Katya said. He exhaled, slow and loud. Just hearing his voice over the line had Brian’s self-control fraying -- it had been so long. “God. This would be a nice time for some Beetlejuicean powers to manifest.”

Brian huffed weakly. “No such luck?”

“I’m beginning to realize that ‘luck’ isn’t really my wheelhouse. My spiritual  _environs_. My…” he trailed off. “Fuck. I don’t know.”

That, for some reason, set Brian to shaking again, one knee jiggling against the other uncontrollably.

“I just -- it was so stupid,” he said. “We were drinking last night, Bianca had just left, and I guess I passed out and when I walked out this morning Adore was live and -- fuck, when my phone started vibrating, I thought I would -- I thought I was gonna throw up.”

He cut himself off.

“So,” Katya said, “so what does this mean?”

Brian tapped his fingers against his thigh in counterpoint to the shaking, then pressed them against his jaw, feeling the bone shift under skin. He hummed noncommittally.

“Don’t,” Katya said, “Don’t  _do_ that, Trixie, come on. I can’t see you and I can’t know what’s going on in your head. I want -- I want -- “ He made a frustrated noise. “I just want you to tell me what you’re feeling. I want to know. I want to be there for you but I can only do that if you’ll let me.”

“I’m sorry,” Brian said, but it came out too quiet and he had to repeat himself, forcing the words out louder: “I’m sorry. I’m not -- I’m not good at this.”

“You are with lots of things.”

Brian thudded his head back against the wall. “But not  _this_. Okay? Not you. I don’t know how to be -- what did you say -- ‘ _honest to a fault’_ about this, and you, because it’s too big and it could go wrong so easy and that scares the shit out of me, Katya, it really does.”

“Lots of -- not lots of,  _everything_ goes wrong. It already has, right? That’s why you’re there and I’m here. That’s  _life_ ,” Katya said. “You’re gonna have to be more specific.”

It felt like there was something crushing down on Brian’s chest; he could feel his bones creaking with strain. He inhaled raggedly. Across the line, Katya made a noise of distress and said, “Brian…”

“I don’t know where to start,” Brian said, but that wasn’t fucking  _true_. He could hear Bianca in his ear.

There was a quiet  _thud_. “From the beginning, or the end, or even the middle -- get postmodern on me, bitch, I don’t  _care_ , I just want to know what this  _means_.” A metallic click; a lighter. A deep inhale, and the sounds of the street but from far away -- he was smoking indoors, Brian realized. “Like, uh,” Katya continued, “like, are you about to fly to the other side of the world now? Because I’d support you, emotionally, but I’d also be really  _fucking_ sad about it.” Another inhale, less steady. “Fuck.”

“No,” Brian said. He stared at his free hand curled over his knee. “No, there’s no point. I think the past two weeks have proved that pretty definitely.”

“Well then  _what_ ,” said Katya, before interrupting himself: “I’m not being fair. I know I’m not being fair here. It’s just…” A pause. “I’m scared too. This past month -- you’ve never scared me before, not like this. Like, whatever, the magnitude of it all, that was scary -- how much I care, how important you are, whatever whatever whatever. Ugh. But  _you’ve_ never scared me. You’re you.”

Which was stupid, and shouldn’t have made sense, but  _did_. Because Brian was the steady one. Brian was the one who knew himself, Brian was the straight lines to Katya’s pointillism, Brian was the one you could set your course by. Katya…

Brian bit his lip. “You’ve always scared me, but I liked that,” he admitted. “I’m always -- I do this thing where I’m always five steps ahead, like, already, at any given moment, putting the pieces together, but you -- I’ve never been able to plan for you. You interrupt all that. The noise -- the momentum in my head. You make me be  _now_ and that’s scary as fuck.”

There was the sound of wood scraping along tile through the phone line. “And what does  _now_ look like for you? Or those five steps, what do those look like?”

“I --” Brian hesitated. “Is that a chair? Are you turning off your smoke alarm?”

“If I die, I want you to know it’s been a good run, and I went out doing what I love.”

“Which is?”

“Smoking, listening to you talk, and jerkin’ it sadly.”

Brian laughed, something -- not loosening, but settling inside his chest.

“I love you,” he said, and meant it: neurosis, fire alarms, indoor cigarettes and all.

“I love you too,” said Katya. Brian could hear his frown through the phone. “You sound sad,” Katya said, hesitant, and -- yeah, Brian realized, he did.

He sniffed faintly, wiped at his chin. “I am.”

“Don’t be,” Katya said urgently. “Don’t be sad, don’t be -- don’t be like that, Tracy, please.”

“I just…” His voice broke. “I feel like I have to make a choice. And I don’t want to.”

“A choice, a choice between what,” Katya said, the words rapped out too fast to qualify as a question.

Brian inhaled, too shallow, and then tried again with slightly better results. He pressed his palm against his cheek; wet tracks slicked all along the grooves of his life line, head line, heart line.  _Fuck_ , he thought, and said, “Between what I want to have and what I can take coming with it.”

There was a pause over the line, then more metallic clicking -- Katya fumbling at his lighter. “Okay,” he said, a moment later. “Okay. Talk me through this. Please.”

Brian looked up at the ceiling, blinking harshly, then down and around at the room he’d been living in for the past month: the books scattered on the bed sheets, his guitar in the corner, the dress he’d bought with Adore hanging from a hook in the wall. It was -- the only word for it was threadbare. He’d assembled this weird fucking threadbare life and tried to pretend like it was enough, because what he’d been doing for the past  _three fucking years_ hadn’t been.

“You remember the day on the pier?” he said finally.

“That’s an obvious yes. What about it?”

“The night before,” Brian said, “I overheard some shit being said about me backstage to some of the local girls who were on the same ticket. And it wasn’t, like, a big thing, it shouldn’t have even registered, but for whatever reason it did and when I got home I was so  _mad_ and then I spoke to you and it was like -- none of that mattered. You made it not matter.”

Katya made a quiet noise over the phone. “That’s good, right?”

“It should be. But how long can that last? You know?” Brian laughed hoarsely. “It can’t. Evidently.”

A moment passed. Over Brian’s head, outside the window, the noises of Seattle carried on with their daily business.

“I did know,” Katya said, low, reflective. “I think in the back of my mind, that whole day was like… my opening statement on why you should stay. With me. I didn’t know what was going on in your head, not exactly, but -- I know you, Tracy, and I could see the way you were getting worn down. For months -- longer.” He exhaled. “I  _hated_ seeing it.”

“It was a good day,” Brian said. He rubbed at the collar of his t-shirt, where it had begun to stick damply to his skin. “Very convincing.”

“But not enough, huh,” said Katya, but the forced jocularity fell apart halfway through, his voice cracking quietly.

“God,  _no_ , don’t think that. Katya, you can’t think that. It was perfect. One of the most perfect days of my life.”

“Then  _what_ ,” Katya demanded, and this time his voice really did break, and Brian could hear him inhale sharply, suppress a noise, inhale again. He was crying, and he didn’t want Brian to know.

Brian felt his mouth tremble; he pressed his palm against it as his eyes ran over again, harder.

When he could breathe right again, he said, “I woke up the next morning to a facebook message from a complete stranger, with a picture of the two of us on the pier.”

Silence.

“I can’t take that,” Brian said. “I can’t take that, not for years and years. I want to have my  _whole life_ with you.”

There was a wet sound on the other side of the line. “I want that too.”

“But it’s not going to go away,” Brian said, “even if I, whatever, give up this gig and move to a farm outside L.A. and write songs for a living, if I want to be a part of your life, that won’t go away.”

“I could quit.”

Brian laughed weakly. “Don’t be stupid.”

“Hey,” Katya said, Boston thickening his voice, “I can quit whenever I want, aw’right?”

“ _Stop_ ,” Brian insisted, “I’m serious, I would never -- I’d never ask you that. I would never want to ask you that.”

“You don’t have to ask. I want to -- I would do that for you.”

Katya was so stupid. Brian loved him so much.

“And you’d fuckin’ hate it,” Brian said.

It was quiet on the other side of the line.

“The problem isn’t that the job sucks. All jobs suck. It’s not even that my life gets invaded -- whatever, people come up and ruin my burrito, I can handle that. The problem is that -- I love you, a lot, and that’s for  _us_. And thinking about random strangers ruining that? Makes me want to throw myself out of this window.”

Katya cleared his throat roughly; when he spoke again, his voice was determined and  _almost_ even. “So how do we change that?”

We, we, we. Brian smiled, just a little, but it shook and fell too quick. “I don’t know,” he said. “I’m five steps ahead, and I just -- I don’t know.”

Silence. He swallowed, and amended, “I don’t know if we can.”

“I,” Katya said, “I need a minute.”

There was a scuffing sound on the other end of the line -- a chair jolting on hardwood -- and then a hollow kind of quiet. Brian tipped his head back until the crown of his skull bumped against the wall. His chest hitched. He wiped clumsily at his cheeks with the bare skin of his wrist. Across the phone, he could hear, distantly, footsteps; creaking floorboards; a rough sound choked off.

“A minute didn’t help,” Katya said when he returned. “Can I apply for an extension? A day? A week? A year?”

He sounded equal parts chipper and sick.

“Katya…” Brian was all out of words. He couldn’t seem to remember where he’d put them; it was like everything inside of him had been carefully excavated, packaged up too neat and too tidy and removed to somewhere far outside of his body. There weren’t words for this; more to the point, he didn’t want to fucking say them.

“Don’t,” Katya said, and then again, growing louder, “don’t, don’t, _don’t,_ stop -- _stop_ it with that tone, that, that, that tone of finality, it takes two to fucking tangle and you -- I --”

“Katya,” Brian said, more firmly, and Katya fell silent, breathing harshly. Brian waited it out, eyes closed.

“I don’t know what to do,” Katya managed eventually. He inhaled, too loud, a strangled, ugly thing. “I  _love_ you.”

“I know,” Brian said. His eyelashes stuck wetly to his skin, but his breathing was even, too even. “I know.”

It felt like penance, to just sit there, listening to the noise of Katya’s pain. Brian had done this. Brian was making this decision, but they’d both have to live with it.

“I’m sorry,” Katya said after a while. “For yelling.”

“You weren’t yelling.”

“No, but I really wanted to be.”

“You can be mad at me,” Brian said. “I deserve it.”

His voice sounded flat, affectless; like it was coming from the hollow inside his body, not any thinking part of him.

“Shut up,” said Katya. “You don’t -- you don’t fucking deserve any of this. Shut the whole entire fuck up.”

Brian swallowed around something sharp. “I’m just,” he said, and his voice broke, “I’m so sorry, Katya.”

His head hurt; everything hurt. Down the line, Katya made some quiet, ineffective shushing noises.

“You don’t have anything to apologize for here,” Katya said; when Brian hummed his disagreement faintly, he said, “Well, fine. I accept your apology. Jesus Christ.”

From what Brian could hear, he might have been almost smiling.

Somewhere outside, a bus rattled down the street; somewhere else in the building, the distinctive scratch of a record player sounded, and something low and bluegrassy crept into his room through the ceiling and the open window above Brian’s head. His eyes slipped shut again. The skin over them, the thin creases, the indent on either side of the bridge of his nose -- it all hurt.

“I’m exhausted,” he said. The plain truth of it hung in the air.

“Of course,” said Katya, and, “you should get some more sleep,” but he didn’t sound like he meant it at all, or anything that would involve Brian putting down the phone.

Brian pursed his mouth. “I love you,” he said. He tried to put everything into the words. He wasn’t sure how many more times he’d get to say them.

“I love you too,” said Katya, sounding -- spiritually -- about the same.

Brian sniffed, and cleared his throat. “Don’t do anything stupid before we talk next,” he said, and Katya actually laughed.

“Okay,” he said. Then, rushed: “I love you, I love you, I love you. I -- okay. Yeah. Okay.”

“Yeah?” Brian said, clutching the phone so hard his fingers ached.

“Yeah,” Katya said. There was a final pause -- the faint scuff of a chair, weight being resettled -- and then the click of an empty line.

Brian dragged his aching bones up and back into bed. The afternoon sun draped itself along the lines of his body; he was too tired to mind the brightness. When he turned on his side, the light curled into the hollow of his ribs and stomach, splashed across his hands. He fell asleep with the cheap little phone tucked between his palms, out of sight.

*

In his dreams, Brian remembered: the ring of a different phone, the walls of a different apartment. Another place he had called home. A voice, when he picked up the call, that he wasn’t expecting.

_“Hi, is this, uh… is this Trixie?”_

_Brian -- shocked quiet -- didn’t reply fast enough; Katya rushed ahead: “Trixie as in -- uh, not a girl. If you’d seen her you’d know, trust me, you’d remember -- she must have made a mistake writing down her number, or, or maybe she gave me a fake, I don’t know --”_

_“You know,” Brian interrupted, recovering and starting to smile, “If a girl gives you a fake, maybe it’s a sign that she’s just not that into you.”_

_Katya yelled. “Oh bitch, oh bitch! Fuck you! Oh shit,” he said, quieting. His voice moved away from the receiver. “Sorry, Larry, sorry. No yelling in the bar. I know.”_

_Brian’s heart dropped in his chest. “You’re in a bar?”_

_“What? Oh. No, I, uh, I live over one.”_

_And that was -- wow, Brian, like. Brian really didn’t know anything about Katya at all._

_It was weird, how hollow that made him feel._

_“Please,” Katya said after a moment, “I didn’t flame out_ that  _bad. Just some light singeing. Medium rare. Definitely not well done.”_

_Brian laughed, startled. “You didn’t do well? That’s such a surprise. That’s such a shock to me.”_

_“I’m very talented,” Katya said, and then wheezed audibly.  “I’m -- I’m -- I’m very talented.”_

_“But you’re no Pearl, girl,” said Brian, commiserating._

_The scream on the other end of the line brought a smile to his face like he hadn’t had in -- God, it felt like ages._

_“Is this what soldiers in the first world war felt like when they finally got out of those trenches and, like, went to a salon?” he said, the grin audibly stretching at his voice, and Katya only laughed harder. Something bubbled up inside Brian -- like cheap champagne, New Year’s Eve on a budget, watching the countdown clock on his little shitty TV and leaning into a warm side, feeling a heartbeat under his palm --_

_“Come over here and mustard gas this pussy!” Katya said, and then Brian was the one gasping with laughter._

_“I -- I -- I --”_

_“Yes?” said Katya, voice bright. “Spit it out, Tracy. We only have so many minutes before the Germans come.”_

_“Oh, I love when the Germans come,” Brian said, and then, voice shaking with repressed laughter. “‘No man’s land,’ bitch? ‘No man’s land’ is what I call my taint when it’s been a while, bitch.”_

_Katya was reduced to a rattling hiss on the other side of the line. Brian maybe basked in it a little, smug._

_“Wow,” Katya said finally. “Wow. I love you, Trixie Mattel.”_

_And Brian -- blushed, and went hot all over, and nearly dropped his phone._

_“You just love the prospect of an untouched taint,” he said. He pressed his palm to his cheek. “But you know whose taint you’ll be touching?”_

_“Whose?” said Katya, anticipatory._

_Brian licked his lips and drawled, “I dunno. T’aint mine.”_

_Katya screamed again, and Brian huffed a laugh, and let himself relax, settling back into his shitty futon, kicking one socked heel up onto the shitty coffee table and drawing the other knee up to his chest._

_“Oh,” Katya said, “Oh, I missed you, you idiot.”_

_“It was three days. Who’s the idiot here?”_

_“I cried. I mean, a little. More for me than for you. I could feel the fuckin’_ sights down the barrel,  _you know?”_

_Brian knew. “Mm. And how’s dishonourable discharge treating you?”_

_“Not my first experience with discharge, and it definitely won’t be my last, either.” Katya laughed delightedly as Brian made a noise like he was vomiting. But then he sighed, and paused, and Brian -- sobered. He brought his other knee up as well, and folded his arms over them, feeling too angular, all elbows, shoulder blades cutting back into the cushions. “Oh,” Katya said, “I don’t know. I love embarrassing myself on national television, don’t you?”_

_“Sure seems like it,” Brian said. He bit his lip. “What’re you going to do?”_

_“Do?”_

_“Yeah. You know. What’re you going to do about it?”_

_There was another pause on the other end of the line. Brian wished he could see Katya; there was nothing opaque or hidden about Katya face-to-face, in the clear green eyes and mobile mouth and --_

_“I --” Katya said, “Trixie, I --”_

_The door to the bedroom opened, over on Brian’s right. “Bri? My mom wants to know if you’re coming over for dinner tonight. I told her you might still be tired.”_

_The little bubble of quiet and -- something else -- burst, real life reimposing itself. Brian closed his eyes, pressed his forehead against his knees. “Who -- is that the_ boyfriend _, Trixie Mattel?” said Katya in his ear, with a tone in his voice like he thought this was still high school, and having a boyfriend was something deliciously scandalous._

_From the way Brian flushed against his knees, Katya might be right._

_He lifted his face and scrubbed at his forehead roughly. “You’re an angel,” he said, twisting to look over his shoulder. “Next week, okay? I promise.”_

_Over the phone, Katya was laughing at him, and even though Brian was already at home, he felt suddenly heartsick for someplace else._

And Brian woke, not at home, heartsick, struck with all the time he’d wasted and all the countless ways he’d fucked himself over. Fucked them both over. The pillow was creased under his cheek, its corner gripped tight in his fist; he turned into it, so the fabric pressed against half his mouth, the side of his nose. His eyes burned wetly through his lashes.

_“Yeah. You know. What’re you going to do about it?”_

Things had been so fucking simple, even though they weren’t simple at all.

Every part of him felt heavy, dragging him into the mattress. He slept again, leaden and unhappy, and this time he didn’t dream.

*

It was dark when he woke, raining outside his window, and he could smell Adore’s weed from the other side of the door.

Adore was out on the balcony, folded into a chair with a joint between her fingers and one foot stretched up onto the railing, catching raindrops on her toes. The mixed remains of cigarettes and joints from earlier smouldered in an ashtray on the little table beside her; two beer cans were crumpled on the ground, the light from the street catching on the rivets and curves in their twisted bodies.

Brian looked at her for a moment, then went to the kitchen, and got a beer of his own. He also grabbed a pack of veggie salami and a bag of pretzels, because he hadn’t eaten since the night before, and he was an adult, goddamn it.

“Hey,” said Adore as he stepped outside; when he’d cleared the table and set up the provisions between them, she offered him her joint.

He settled into the other chair and took a long hit. The exhale, grey smoke curling lazily up towards the lip of the balcony overhead, seemed to come up from the root of his  _soul_.

“Yeah,” said Adore. Brian hummed agreement, and cracked the tab on his beer.

The rain in Seattle had a life of its own. It wasn’t just an impediment or a hassle; it fell with all the weight of the sky, all the weight of the ocean, like some breaking point had been reached and the clouds had no choice but to crack open. Like they were unburdening themselves of something they’d carried too long, and they didn’t give a shit if it made you late to work or ruined your day -- they spilled and spilled and spilled, clawing their way towards the relief of being done. The streets ran blue and the greenery became swollen with it, and people clustered under awnings, arms brushing, waiting for it to end.

Jesus Christ, he was maudlin.

When he tore his eyes away from the skies, Adore was watching him, mouth pursed in that funny way she had.

“So what’re you gonna do?” she said.

Brian twitched, remembering his dream.

“I don’t know,” he said.

Adore slumped. “I don’t know what to tell you, man. I don’t know what I can say that Bianca hasn’t said, or Katya, or that you haven’t been telling yourself.”

“I don’t know if there’s anything  _to_ say,” said Brian, tapping his fingers against the side of his can.

“Meaning what?”

“Meaning…” He took another hit. The rain was fucking mocking him. “Meaning I thought  _irreconcilable differences_ was just a euphemism for straight people with something to hide, but. I can’t make the pieces come together. I can’t make it work out.”

His voice caught.

“Fuck,” said Adore. She was still watching him, and he wished she’d stop, because she looked like he was breaking her heart. “Fuck, Trixie. Is this -- I’ve heard you guys talking, late at night. You know, when I can’t sleep -- you’d talk for  _ages_ , before. I’d come out in the living room for a midnight snack and you’d be so -- so quiet. Your voice, it was like she was right there with you, and nothing else even existed. Is this really something you can give up?”

Brian hunched his shoulders, wrapping the old flannel more tightly across his chest. “I don’t know how many times I’m able to say  _“I can’t”_ tonight, Adore.”

It should’ve been biting, but instead he just sounded tired. Adore nodded, and finally looked away. That feeling of fog, like the air an inch from his skin all over was buzzing, began to settle in, but it didn’t feel good. It just felt empty. Brian took another sip of his beer and thought about going back to bed.

“Listen,” Adore said. She stared out onto the street like he wasn’t even there. “Sometimes shit happens, and we learn to be scared. It happens so much, and we learn it so good -- that even if you  _do_  figure out how to stand up to it, you don’t learn how to tell it to  _fuck off_ , because you don’t really believe it ever will.”

That empty feeling inside of Brian yawned open; the cold of the air came all the way inside of him. He stared at Adore, at the fall of her bangs over her eyes.

After a moment she looked back at him. Her gaze was frank, and her face too bare.

“Sometimes, you’ve gotta stop coping and start saying fuck off. So if that’s what this is for you -- good. I’ve got you. You don’t need to say another word, and anyone who wants more? You send ‘em to me.”

Brian stared at her, feeling very far away from himself. He lifted a hand that barely felt like his to run his fingertips under his eye; behind his palm, his mouth trembled.

“I just,” he said. Something inside of him twisted. “I wish she were here.”

Adore made a quiet noise, but said nothing. She swung her heel off the railing to the ground, and reached over to take the joint from him. They sat in silence for a long moment, smoke drifting upwards, the rain pelting down.

She switched the joint to her other hand, and reached out again to take his in hers over the table. Her fingertips twitched against his palm.

“I have this show tomorrow night,” she said. “Just a lil’ acoustic gig. You should play in it. If you want to, I mean.”

Brian turned his hand so that they were palm-to-palm. Adore laced their fingers together, then took another hit.

“I mean,” she said again. “Everyone already knows you’re here, girl. What’s the fuckin’ harm?”

 _What more can go wrong_ \-- a very dangerous question, in Brian’s experience. But… everyone really did know. Like, everyone. It was out there. It was over.

Brian took a swig of his beer and made a considering noise.

“Think about it,” Adore said. “I was gonna use those backing tracks we put together, but nothing beats the sound of the real thing.”

She let go of his hand; Brian tucked his hand into his pocket, and turned his phone over in his palm, feeling the shape of it with his fingertips. The rain thundered relentlessly down.

“I just wish he was here,” Brian said again. His voice almost disappeared under the weight of the rain.

*

In his dreams, there were arms around him, sheets tangled between his feet, warm sunlight kissing the bare skin of his back. In his dreams, someone was whispering; he smiled, ducked his face into the turn of a neck; whispered back,  _Stupid. I love you too._ Fingers traced the jut of his shoulder blades. Lips pressed dry against his temple, and he slipped his hand between them to rest where he could feel that beating, slow and steady, restful against his palm.

In his dreams, it was so simple.

When he woke, it was to a missed call from Katya, and a text:  _i might not always like your decisions but i always trust them. i wait on fuck all, no god and no man, but i’ve always waited on you. your word’s all i need, tracy._

He read it, then read it again.

Out in the living room, Adore was plucking away on her guitar, shoulders curled in. The skies outside drifted high, a bright kind of grey. Brian breathed it in, and felt -- for the first time in a long time -- a weird kind of peace. Like the breaking of a storm; something like resolve, something like resolution.

“Hey,” he said. Adore looked up. He smiled awkwardly. “What time did you say your show was?”

The grin that lit her face was brilliant, and something in Brian answered --  _yes_ , it said, yes,  _finally._

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


**Notes for the Chapter:**

> find me @ daremebyday on tumblr dot com


	9. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this one is for to the person who inspired me to start this fic and the person who kept me going through it.

_FROM: KATYA -_

_i might not always like your decisions but i always trust them. i wait on fuck all, no god and no man, but i’ve always waited on you. your word’s all i need, tracy._

_*_

Brian stared down a wall of energy drinks and seltzers, his taste buds already vibrating in anticipation of the adrenaline rush.

His first in over a month.

It wasn’t just the taste buds, in fairness. His whole body was humming at some high frequency, like a plucked string. And it wasn’t all anticipation. That was why he was stuck there, standing in a fluorescently yellow aisle at two in the afternoon, unmoving; that chilling precipice-feeling, that only-one-step-left feeling, the anticipation and the _dread_. Staring into the schizophrenic chaos of colours stacked up the wall was like staring into the sliced line where the lights cut off and you know, instinctively, that the stage falls away - and reaching out would be taking that one step closer.

“Hey buddy,” someone called from behind him, hesitant. “You, uh. Can I ring something up for you or, uh, call someone to intervene?”

So maybe he’d been standing there, staring, for going on five minutes. “Do you have a direct line to God?” he said.

There was a pause.

“I can’t tell if that’s a jab at my religion or a cry for help.”

“Honestly -” Brian said, finally reaching out and plucking a red bull down from the shelf, “- I don’t know you, but it could be either. Or both.”

He turned, and the girl at the counter snapped her gum.

“Hey,” he said. “I _do_ know you.”

“Sad guy,” she said. Mariam. He’d hit on her, sort of, accidentally - Jesus, was that a week ago? “I know you too.”

“Cool. It’s not the religion thing then.”

“Cool,” she said. “Has anyone ever, like. Introduced you to the concept of groceries?”

He walked over and placed his drink down in front of her. “The raccoons that raised me in the backwoods of Wisconsin didn’t really bother with that stuff.”

Mariam scratched at the line of her hijab across her temple. “I have another question.” He nodded. “Has anyone ever told you normal people don’t talk like that?”

“For a free red bull I’ll give you names, dates, and how long it took me to shrug it off,” he said, and she laughed, flashing her gum.

The register accepted his card with a ding, and she made to hand it back, then didn’t let go when he took the other side. He looked up to find her inspecting him, a little furrow between her brows.

“Brian,” she said. “That’s what it was, right? You look fucked up.”

Which, okay, fair.

“I’ve had a weird month,” he said.

“I wasn’t finished,” she said, one corner of her mouth curling. “You look fucked up, but… less sad. That’s good, I guess.”

This was another precipice. Brian took a deep breath, and gave the card a little tug, and smiled too. “I have a show tonight. Well, it’s not my show, but I’m playing in it. You should come.”

She tugged back and let go. “A show? Put me on a list and we’ll see.”

“A list?” He remembered the dark walls, scratched bar, and duct-tape-and-a-prayer lighting rig at the club where Adore had had her pageant. “I’m not sure it’s the kind of place with a list.”

“I work part-time at a 7-Eleven,” said Mariam. “If you want me there, put me on a list.”

He laughed, and pocketed his drink. “I’ll see what I can do. The Hole In The Wall, 8 p.m. Google it, I swear it’s a real place.”

She made a show of writing it down on the back of his receipt and he laughed again. It felt good. When she tucked the receipt in her pocket, like she wasn’t just humouring a crazy person she’d met by total happenstance and like maybe she really would come, that felt good too.

Steps from the door, she called his attention back. “Brian!” she said; and when he turned, she asked, “Is this you taking care of yourself, then?”

He paused. Fingered the red bull in his pocket, and thought about the edge of the stage.

“I don’t know,” he said. “Come to the show and find out.”

*

Some tropical storm had run its course through Adore’s apartment, covering every available surface with clothes, makeup, and beer cans. The little coffee table was strewn with electrical cords and disassembled sound equipment; as Brian shut the front door behind him, Adore appeared out of her room, the bulk of her dinosaur of a sewing machine clutched in her arms, her phone dangling precariously out of her hoodie pocket.

“Good!” she said, spotting him. “Listen - you can borrow some of my shit, but the alterations are all on you. I can barely take shit in, and you’ve got - you know, you’ve got those shoulders, and stuff.”

“Just tell me I’m fat and get it over with,” said Brian.

“If you were fat we could cinch you, bitch,” said Adore. “I can’t help my delicate frame. Did you play football in high school or something?”

“Oh my god, _bye_.” Brian sniffed and set his drink down on the counter beside a tangle of cheaply-painted jewellry. “You expect me to believe you have a cincher here? Come on.”

There was a heavy _thud_ as the sewing machine landed on the coffee table, tilting awkwardly at one corner on top of the cords. Adore straightened. “I’m serious - what do you want? The same thing we did last time? Or - I mean, I dunno, nothing says you even have to be in drag, honestly.”

“It _is_ being advertised as a drag event.”

“Yeah, but it’s _my_ drag event, and I say you can wear whatever you want.”

That was - not something that had occurred to Brian. When he’d said yes to Adore, or even before, when he’d woken up that morning and begun to realize this was what he had to do - what he _wanted_ to do - he hadn’t pictured doing it as anything but Trixie.

He could do it as himself.

Would that be more real? More safe?

Less honest?

“No,” he said. “No, you know, I actually have an idea. Do you have, like…” he cast around. “I don’t know. What do you have in pink?”

*

“Shots, ladies?”

Brian startled and nearly dropped his guitar. From the doorway, the bartender - Joe from before - made an apologetic face. “Sorry. Lost in thought?”

“Free drinks scare her,” said Adore from other corner of the dingy bathroom, leaning back against the black wall and blowing on her nails. “She’s worried about what she might _become_.”

“You’re not far off,” said Brian. He gave Joe a sheepish smile and accepted the shots, putting one on the counter behind him. “I have a lot of questions today.”

“Honestly, I have some too,” said Joe, and Brian winced.

“Yeah, I get that. Hi,” he said, and offered his free hand over the body of his guitar, “I’m Brian.”

Joe, who continued to prove himself to be a better guy than Brian had ever been in his life, evidently didn’t hold a grudge. “Nice to meet you, Brian. Not Madyson tonight?”

“No,” Brian said. “Trixie, actually,” and the shape of the name was strange and thrilling in his mouth.

It’d been - Jesus, it’d been a long time.

“Well, break a leg, Trixie. Soundcheck sounded great, Adore,” he said, and Adore threw him a lazy salute as he slipped back out the door, shutting it behind himself.

“He’s nice,” said Adore, blowing on the nails of her other hand before rising and coming to join Brian by the mirror. She accepted the shot with a nod. “I like this place a lot - isn’t it great?”

Brian nodded, looking around at the graffiti scribbled across the black walls - names, dates, and hearts filling the space like a time capsule, stranger after stranger picking up one of the metallic sharpies left in a cup by the sink out of some universal human desire to leave their mark. There was a microwave on the floor, plugged into a low outlet; a container of half-eaten leftovers sat on top of it alongside the bottle of Adore’s nail polish. Just beside it, at some point, someone had written in silver:

_sometimes youre down here, but fuck it_

_all thats left is up._

“I didn’t get to come in here last time,” he said. “It’s - yeah. It’s really great.”

Adore squinted at him. “I think you’re dry,” she said, so he picked up his gluestick off the counter and lay down another layer over his brows.

The rest of the room could only be called grunge, but the mirrors were kept perfectly clear, albeit dim in the few lights set above them. His cheek contour was done, and the bottom of his eyes; he looked like the colour blocks a painter would set down first, featureless, only the faintest etching of a person. He set his guitar down beside himself and leaned closer, poking at his brow, testing. The hair was stiff under his fingertips, the texture smooth. He eyed himself, and picked up his base cream, watching the way his face shifted and flickered, picturing shadows, highlights, pinks and whites and just a hint of glitter.

“Hey,” said Adore, bumping his shoulder with her own. He hadn’t realized he’d gone still.

“Yeah,” he said, and set himself to work.

When everything but his lips were set, he checked the time and cracked his redbull. Joe appeared at the door before he could take his first sip, with four more shots - two for Brian, two for Adore. Joe's eyes widened as he took in Trixie, most of the way to finished, but he said nothing, and Brian was horribly grateful for it.

“House is opening,” Joe said. Adore looked up from her phone and blew him a kiss.

Brian drained his can at a too-familiar, carefully measured pace, taking a short break every few sips to check the tune in his guitar, play a run, keep his fingers warm. There was an art to energy drinks. It had something to do with not bludgeoning your blood pressure into exhaustion - he didn’t have to know the specifics to know how to make it work for him.

 _(Art is subjective,_ _mama_ , Katya would have said, and downed hers in one long swallow.) 

When he set the can aside, he picked up his lip liner, then set it back down. His hand was shaking.

Adore sidled up close, wrapping an arm around his waist and looking at them both in the mirror. “You clean up nice,” she said, squeezing him gently.

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” said Brian.

Adore giggled. “No one says that.”

“What? Yes, they do. What the fuck.”

“Like riding a _bike_ , dude. Not a bicycle.”

“Oh, God, I don’t know,” said Brian. He lifted the pencil again. “You think my parents taught me how to ride a fucking bicycle?”

Adore shook with laughter against his side. The corners of his mouth twitched, but the line he drew against his skin was steady.

The pieces came together; they always did, in the end. Things fall into place. He really believed that - even the chaos of the universe was predictable, in the end. Shit happens, as it always does. There was nothing surprising when things went wrong. But there was also nothing surprising in the way that Trixie came together, a gleam of pink shined across her lip; the way he drew her into existence; the way he blinked, and there she was. There he was.

He pressed lash glue into his eyelid - one, then the other, smacking his lips as he waited - until it went tacky. Then he blinked, and there he was.

Adore made a soft noise and squeezed him around the waist. She must have felt it - the moment his breath caught in his chest as his throat went unbearably tight.

She kissed the air beside his cheek. “You look like a beautiful nightmare,” she said, and he laughed, the vice around his ribs releasing.

The scuffed pink overalls, fraying and cut-off short, were Adore’s, and so was the wig, straight and bleachy blonde with bad layers and a bad rainbow dip-dye at the ends. Her mouth twitched as he sighed over the state of it all. Then he pulled on the pink dress over-top - his pink dress, the one he bought that day at the thrift store. He left it open, the tie at the waist hanging on either side of him, and smoothed the lapels so that the beadwork lay right, silky fabric shifting over his shoulders. The silver and red of the beaded scissors glinted in the dim light.

In the mirror, Adore was looking at him like it hurt. That felt about right. He swallowed, hard, against yet another question rising in his throat. He had too many of them tonight. All this month, talking had been the last thing he wanted to do, but now - he wanted to ask, he wanted to say it out loud, put the words out there so _someone else_ would have to deal with them, because he couldn’t do it himself anymore. It was this awful, hungry ache trapped inside of him. 

The pink under his eyes glinted in the mirror, matching the faint shimmer of his dress. He ran a nail along the underside of his lip line, catching the faintest smudge and whisking it away. He looked into the mirror, and Trixie looked back, and he wondered: was this hello or goodbye?

Adore cleared her throat and picked up her shots, one in each hand. “Nervous?” she said - an easier question.

Brian took his own. “Nervous is after.”

“Cheers, motherfucker,” said Adore, and she clinked her two shots against his. Then they knocked them back, one after the other, careful of their lipstick - apple green and candy pink, respectively.

There was a knock at the door. It cracked open a hair, and the guy who ran them through soundcheck poked his head in. “Time, guys,” he said. “We’re gonna drop the lights to get you into the wing, okay?”

Adore didn’t look at him; she looked at Brian, waiting.

It wasn’t necessary. There was no question in his mind about doing this. The only question was what it meant.

“You heard the man,” he said, and then the lights went down outside the crack in the door, and they slipped out into the rumble of the house.

There was dark, and the faint silhouette of a seated audience making noise, and then the sound guy’s hand on Brian’s elbow helping him up the steps. Then a curtain, and the crowd noise became dull. Adore was there a second later, tucked against him and his guitar in the little alcove. She looped her arm through his as the sound of his own heartbeat grew louder in his ears, drowning out the crowd beyond.

The lights came up, blindingly bright, then fell all the way to black. The audience shifted, mumbled, started to clap and cheer. The speakers crackled to life and the cheers jumped higher - enthusiastic, but not frenzied in that way that Brian knew too well.

“Ladies and weirdfolk,” said someone, sounding perfectly Seattle, “please welcome to The Hole In The Wall - your elusive chanteuse, Adore Delano, with assistance from the one, the only, Trixie Mattel!”

The noise from the crowd rippled with surprise.

Adore squeezed Brian’s arm, once, and then strode on stage, and Brian followed her out into the glare of the lights, guitar slung across his back.

The stage was set with two chairs and two mic stands, shabby like the bar was shabby, and the lights didn’t quite cover the whole breadth of it; there were dark spots, thin shadows cutting across the middle, places where you could see out from the stage and into the audience. It was a full house, but the house itself wasn’t much. Maybe fifteen small tables through the front and then the bar at the back. And the audience was the same crowd as from the pageant - a little weird and a lot gay, but it was a weekday show, and an acoustic one at that. There were no screams as he and Adore sat down in the center of the stage, only a bit of chuckling when his guitar banged against the side of his chair and he made a face.

Adore laughed. “The elusive chanteuse?” she said, leaning into the mic. “What the hell is a chanteuse.”

“The elusive chartreuse,” said Brian, nodding towards her lipstick, and even though he was too far from the mic to be picked up, the people in the front couple of rows heard and laughed.

“So, hey,” said Adore. “Thanks for coming, guys. This is just, like, a baby show - the songs are pretty new, and I’ve never performed them live in this way, so if I cry or shit the bed - you’ve been warned.” She folded her feet up under herself, one beat up converse sticking out the side of the chair. “Also, I don’t know, maybe you haven’t noticed, but on guitar tonight playing with me we have _Trixie Mattel_ , which is just - amazing. She’s amazing. She inspires me so much.”

Brian looked up from the scuffed up rubber to the light on Adore’s face, and the warmth in her eyes, and her smile.

“So this one matters to me,” Adore said. “Audiences and gigs and management and deals will come and go, and they’ll fuckin’ _go_. But this shit counts. So be here with us, yeah? I want to be _here_ tonight.”

Probably it didn’t make sense to the audience. Probably the audience didn’t care. But Brian leaned over his guitar and took Adore’s hand for a moment, pulled her closer, kissed her cheek, light enough it wouldn’t leave a mark. She smiled at him when he pulled away, and laughed loudly when he said, “In the immortal words of Tyra Sanchez, “you jump, I jump.” Right?”

She winked at him, then turned back to the bar. “This is “Whole 9 Yards.””

Wood under his palm, strings under his fingers. The confidence of callouses. His guitar reverberated against his sternum when he strummed, grounding and settling him. And with Adore’s voice to his left in his ear, they could have been in her living room; when he closed his eyes, they were.

At the end of the song, there was applause and a handful of cheers. Adore leaned back and laughed. “Thank you!” she said, and grinned at Brian, and Brian looked up into the stage lights and - smiled.

They ran through some of the stuff from Adore’s latest album, some songs from her older ones, and even a handful of covers. There was a malfunction with the lights at one point - the one directly over Brian cut out - and while it was fixed, he looked out into the bar, _really_ looked, and exhaled slowly. He fanned himself in the brief respite from the heat. Steph was in the front row, holding up her phone face-forward, and Brian grinned helplessly when he realized she was facetiming Bianca in. A few rows behind Steph, he could make out Mariam, leaning over to whisper something to a friend. He gave her a little wave, and she wiggled her fingers back, smirking.

Finally the issue was fixed. Adore raised both hands and proclaimed, “Let there be light, fuckers!” to a round of cheers. Brian snickered and leaned into his mic, which had thus far sat useless. “Didn’t I look so soft though? Didn’t I look so soft? Sophia _Ho_ -ren, am I right?”

“Soft-hia Ho-ren,” said Adore, and Brian screamed.

“A woman!” he insisted. “A beautiful, sensual, intriguing woman. Lauren Ba-Call me later, am I right, guys?”

The chorus of groans and laughter lit him all the way up inside.

He turned to grin at Adore, and there, looking past her shoulder, in the dark little alcove, was Katya.

Brian felt his mouth go slack and his eyes go wide. But that was secondary, that, and the noise of the crowd, and the laughter on Adore’s face, and the guitar in his hands, that was all secondary. Because there was Katya. Katya, for real, Katya, _right there_ , the shadows doing nothing to hide the smile tucked tight at the corners of his mouth or the too-bright shine of his eyes or the way his whole body leaned forward, like he was only barely restraining himself from bursting out onto the stage, and all of that just for Brian, where no one else could see.

Katya, tired, haggard, _there,_ just for Brian.

Katya held Brian’s gaze, and everything inside of Brian, all the walls of resistance and stagnancy and fear, caved and crumbled like a building under demolition, this mass internal injury, but it didn’t hurt. It didn’t leave him hollow. He stared at Katya, and Katya stared back, and he felt -

Not brave. Not ready. But with the cavity inside his ribs cleared out, he could breathe, he could _think_ , and he blinked and he swallowed and he knew: this was it.

Of all the things that had been hurting him this past month, the worst of them was being away from Katya.

He cleared his throat and Adore broke off mid-joke. She took one look at his face and her eyes widened and then narrowed with triumph, and he realized, _she knew._

“I, uh,” he said, hoarse, then he leaned into the mic and said, “Sorry, I was somewhere else for a second there. I just. I’d like to do a song, actually, if that’s okay with you all.”

He said it for the crowd but he meant it for Adore. She made a disbelieving face at him and then rolled her eyes - _duh_. She waved him forward toward the crowd, and he obediently reached for his mic stand and adjusted it closer, fixed the height and the angle.

“If even one of you fucks ruins this for me, I’ll kill you,” Adore said loudly into her own mic. He choked with laughter over his guitar.

With the capo in place, he straightened, adjusting one of his lapels. “So, uh, this is a new one,” he said. “New for me as well.” He flicked a glance to the left, where Katya was standing, arms wrapped around himself. When their eyes met, Katya’s lips parted silently, the shadows deepening and catching against the sharp lines of his face; he seemed to search Brian’s face, fabric shifting as his arms tightened around his stomach. Brian tore his gaze away. “This is just for tonight. So, uh, if you’re filming, please don’t post this. Let it be for us - for me.”

He inhaled, and set his fingers to the strings.

The melody started like the precarity of glass, of pebbles sliding down dunes, of rain bouncing off pavement. It started like he had. “A path breaks down two sides,” he began, soft and unpracticed; “between the tide and the tracks; and I find that I can’t hide, and I find I can’t go back.” His breath caught; he shut his eyes and kept going. “But _you_ \- don’t have to tie me tight to you - ‘cause I’d be lying if I said to set me loose; and _you_ \- you said you’re fine with just a truce - but I’ve been lying, love, and so have you.”

He risked a glance at Katya; he had a hand pressed over his mouth, and even from a distance, his eyes looked wet and too, too green.

This was more of a confessional than a song. This was years of mistakes; years of forgiveness. This was his whole heart. He ignored the audience and the sweat on the side of his face. He ignored everything but the rasp of the strings under his finger and the feeling of Katya’s eyes on him. He tumbled through verse after chorus after verse, until the bridge, and then the last run - he looked up and Katya was _there_ \- and with the breathlessness of a last second decision, in the final lines, he rewrote himself and sang,

“ _And love’s the kind of feeling that’s not easy to derail,_

_I know that I’ve been trying ‘cause,_

_I’ve lost the when and where._

_But I hear waves in my dreams at night,_

_Feel the sunlight and your stare,_

_So maybe it’s to no avail -_

_And maybe ‘stay’ won’t turn out stale -_

_I think it might be time to go -_

_Off road at the end of the trail.”_

And that should have been the end, but the words were there, filling his mouth, found at last. He played a short descent, slowing them to a close, and added over the final fall of notes,

“ _Please take my hand, we both can go -_

_Off road at the end of the trail.”_

The last chord spilled out of its wooden home like a punch to the stomach, and he lowered his face, holding his guitar close.

There was a breath. Then applause rumbled out of the audience like thunder; he ducked his face further, pressing his cheek against the ridge and sheen of the wood, and smiled.

“Trixie Mattel,” said Adore, sounding slightly choked up. “The rest of us only fucking wish, dude.”

He looked up to find her smiling. Behind her, still safely hidden away in the shadows, Katya caught his eye, mouth unsteady, and nodded once: _yes_.

*

The rest of the show was a blur. Brian made it through, miraculously, then they took their bows, played one more song at the crowd’s insistence, bowed again, and disappeared off into the alcove. Katya wasn’t there.

“She’s in the bathroom,” said Adore, catching the look on his face. “I told the sound guy ahead of time to send her back there during the finale. You know, to miss the crowd.”

“ _You_ ,” said Brian, rounding on her. She smiled brilliantly up at him.

“You said you wished she was here. I texted her, and now she is.”

Head spinning, he said, “You texted her?”

“As soon as you said you’d do the show, girl.”

Brian grabbed her, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. She laughed, clutching at his sides. Careless of his makeup, he pressed his lips against her temple. “You,” he said, “are the best person I know.”

She pulled back. “I get that a lot.”

The lights went dark beyond the curtain. She swatted at him and said, “Go,” before ducking back out onto the stage, calling for the sound guy to hook her mic up again.

Brian watched her go, then slung his guitar around onto his back and slipped out the other side, down the stairs in the precarious dark, groping for the knob of the bathroom door and sliding in before more than a sliver of light could shine out.

Inside it was grungy, and dim, and smelled of leftovers, and leaning against the far back wall, past the stalls, was Katya.

Brian stared for a moment, then unslung his guitar and set it down unsteadily.

He took a step forward. Katya straightened up, unwrapping his arms from around himself, and Brian - Brian swallowed, and then he was crossing the space, blind and stupid, to get his hands on Katya’s shoulders and pull him in, the wiry heat of him, and Katya ducked his face into Brian’s collarbone and exhaled hotly there, and all the tension in Brian’s body - melted away.

He curled his arms around Katya’s shoulders, pressing one hand against the nape of his neck, and buried his nose in the soft short hair bristling at the back of his skull. Katya smelled like hotel soap and cigarettes; his shape was familiar and dear. He wrapped his arms around Brian’s waist, like it was what he’d been waiting to do all night, and Brian pressed his nose to Katya’s ear and sighed out every bad thing left inside him.

He could feel Katya’s heart beating against his chest. Silk rustled between them. It felt so good to hold and be held; he squeezed his eyes shut against the burn prickling at his lashes, pressed his mouth to Katya’s cheek, barely a kiss. Katya exhaled roughly and squeezed him closer.

It was easy as falling to run his fingers through the short hair at the back of Katya’s neck, turning his face closer. Easy as anything to meet his eyes, soft and waiting, and lean in. Katya’s palm found the crux of his jaw and his neck, thumb sweeping over his cheek, heedless of the makeup. Brian let his eyes fall shut. He felt Katya’s breath close against his skin, and then he pressed his lips to Katya’s, and whatever clock had been ticking away inside of him all this time shuddered to a stop.

He made a soft sound. Katya’s hand shifted at the small of his back. Something lanced through him, almost like pain, some deep ache, and he pulled Katya closer, opening his mouth, kissing him again, needing him as close as he could be.

“I’m here,” Katya whispered against his mouth, voice rough. “I’m right here.”

Brian fisted a hand in the back of Katya’s shirt and let himself believe it.

 

 


End file.
